One thing that the 1-hour-long video documentary, “Growing Up Online,” does well is that it demonstrates how the Internet has created many new challenges in recent years. John Maggio and Rachel Dretzin, the producers of this documentary, explore the meaning of being a teenager in today’s digital age, and what educating these teenagers is like, who expect education to be entertaining and have fleeting attention spans. Indeed, setting boundaries and teaching their children about the safe use of the Internet has become more difficult for parents.
How the budding sense of identity, school work, and social of a teenager is affected by various online contacts is being constantly examined by scientists. New findings indicate that there reason young people find the Internet so particularly appealing. As the documentary points out, this is because the Internet provides them with an unparalleled number and variety of places to interact with others, from instant messaging to message boards to so-called social network websites like facebook.com and myspace.com (Greenfield 391–394).
A particularly notable portion of the documentary is Part 4 that sheds light on how the Internet provides teenagers with the opportunity to create new identities online. Indeed, a bevy of tempting opportunities become available to teenagers in cyberspace to pretend to be someone they are not. However, recent studies also suggest that teenagers often go online to confront their own identities rather than to deceive people. Typically, adolescents are often seeking to discover who they are and where they belong (Subrahmanyam, Smahel & Greenfield, 2006).
The documentary is particularly accurate when it voices the concerns of today’s parents who find it quite challenging to manage the Internet use of their children and are anxious about what their children post on the Internet. For instance, there are generally no specific topics in online teen chat rooms, where a wide range of children are attracted and are often presented with hurtful communications. Typical conversations at a monitored and unmonitored were observed in a study (Subrahmanyam, Smahel & Greenfield, 2006). The study revealed that participants at both chat sites provided their personal information, such as their age and sex. A greater use of obscene language and sexual references at the unmonitored chat site was also observed.
Keeping the above in mind, it is not surprising that parents are also anxious that their children might become victims of an online predator. Such a risk certainly exists, as revealed in another documentary, “Dateline: To Catch a Predator,” which investigates pedophilic online predators who are interested in sexual liaisons with underage children. Watching what these men are like while on the computer is sure to disgust any parent. Parents will be shocked that these pedophiles are everyday men, from fathers to firefighters to even police offers, who are able to get in touch with potential underage targets over the Internet. No wonder the parents of today are getting more and more apprehensive whenever their children are on the computer and want to know what they do on the computer.
Ultimately, the Internet is definitely playing a role in exposing children to things that are not appropriate for them and leading them toward becoming victims of things like cyber bullying and online predators. However, as Anne Collier says in the documentary, the children themselves are participants to some extent. As terrifying as this documentary might seem, it is actually meant to be an eye-opener for parents. For many parents, things stated in this documentary may not be a news flash, but some aspects of it are sure to surprise parents.
References
Greenfield, P. (2006). Children, adolescents, and the internet: A new field of inquiry in developmental psychology. Developmental Psychology, 42(3), 391–394.
Maggio, J. (Director), & Dretzin, R. (Director) (2008).Growing up online [Web]. Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kidsonline/
Subrahmanyam, K., Smahel, D., & Greenfield, P. (2006). Connecting developmental constructions to the internet: identity presentation and sexual exploration in online teen chat rooms. Dev Psychol, 42(3), 395–406.
