Growing Up Online

PBS's Frontline: Growing Up Online discusses the issue of social networking and it's effect on today's youth. There is no doubt that today's youth is living the majority of their life on the internet. The internet is no longer just a helpful resource tool, it is an addiction. It is an addiction that the majority of the students on campus have fallen victim to, and I would be a hypocrite to say I haven't been sucked into the cyber world as well. In fact, the irony of this assignment is that we have to not only watch this documentary on the web, but must also read How Obama Did It and the segment about virtual communities. In the past hour and half that I have been working on this assignment, I've also intermittently checked my Facebook, instant messaged back and forth with a few friends, and e-mailed my mother. I can now also say that I am the newest member of the so-called "blogosphere" where my peers and I will pretend to be interested in what one another has to say on social networking. (Although a select few might take a genuine interest, in fact, Frontline makes a better documentary than anticipated)

While I can relate to this documentary in many ways, it also raised some alarming red flags. As a member of Facebook, I'm well aware that people can keep in touch with friends and keep others informed of what's occurring in every day life, but more and more people seem to be taking social networking to a new and scary level. When teens begin to change who they are, experiment with new personas, and live solely in a cyber world, it becomes NOT okay. The internet is also home to sexual predators, pedophiles, stalkers, and as it turns out, "cyberbullies". The fact is that teens go online and create space that is entirely "their own", free from the restraints of parental supervision and put themselves up for the world to see. More often than not, teenage girls are scantily dressed and use it as a form of rebellion against their parents who sadly, often have no idea what their children are doing online. One girl said it best, "If I was a parent and saw my children doing this online, I would probably cry."

In the case of Jessica, she took on a whole new persona to make herself feel beautiful when she was socially rejected by her peers in the real world. One girl, a teen with anorexia uses the internet to find support groups for her eating disorder. Let me clarify- these are no support groups that encourage anorexics to get healthy, but rather encourage it (Thin is Beautiful). Lastly, cyberbullying was disturbing to watch because it has in many cases led to suicide. The worst aspect of all three of these issues is the fact that parents are so out of touch and unaware with what goes on in their children's lives, because they are hardly living in the real world. They are living their lives in private on the internet, and it raised no flags that Jessica spent 24 hours a day in her room, or that this girl doesn't eat, and lastly, that Ryan Patrick Halligan was chatting with strangers about the best way to kill himself.

Now that I've gone off on a tangent, it is important to keep in check that when this documentary was made, there were 160 million members on Facebook and MySpace combined. (This was in 2008) In one year, this number has most likely multiplied, and will in fact keep growing. The internet is an ever growing addiction, that has not only sucked our generation into, but is now claiming our parents, grandparents, younger brothers and sisters, teachers, colleagues, etc.