Watching the documentary Growing Up Online was rather like watching a review of the last twoe decades. I was born in 1990, and having grown up at the start of the Digital Era I recall many of the concerns and issues that were brought up in this documentary.
I believe that the documentary covered most of the major issues of the internet age from a fairly well balanced point of view, covering issues such as internet privacy vs. children’s safety, online personas, cyber dating, and cyber bullying.
However, there were several points that I think could have been better done. One of my biggest concerns is that they spent far too little time discussing the issue of using the internet to cheat at school, and went for a far too neutral approach. Essentially, they interviewed a teacher who uses traditional methods and one who employs the internet heavily in his classes and left it for the reviewer to decide. The full ramifications of either side is left ambiguous, and it’s even implied that there is some great debate now about the nature of cheating, about whether it is even possible to cheat when using the internet. Certainly the internet is extremely useful as a research tool, but there is an enormous difference between reading Romeo and Juliet and reading a synopsis on Spark Notes. And the boy who brags about essentially not doing his school work is met with utter neutrality.
I was also a little skeptical that the documentary portrayed kids recreating new identities on the internet as a wholly positive thing. While the girl they focused on in the documentary became an amateur model and a minor internet celebrity, many things could have gone wrong, like attracting cyber stalkers. And while cyber stalkers were brought up, the documentary seemed to minimize the threat they can pose, brushing the danger off by citing a study that said most children have the sense to stay away from sexual solicitations. This is not only careless, but dangerous as well. Cyber stalkers can be just as dangerous as real life stalkers, and glossing something like this is terribly negligent.
I was also rather irritated by a lot of the parents, especially in discussing matters of privacy. They showed that many parents are concerned about the trouble their children can get into on the internet, and yet were willing to let their kids spend six hours or more on the computer with no supervision. Attempts to monitor the children on the documentary were half-hearted and often laughable (such as using a parental monitoring system that can be subverted just by changing windows) and many of them seemed scared of being seen as a bad parent for not respecting their child’s privacy. While I would never say that the dangers of the internet are not real, I would say that some of those dangers could be minimized if parents would show some spine. The threat of banning the kids from the internet for misbehavior or loitering on dangerous sites was never even mentioned.
However, I did feel that they covered the issues of cyber-bullying adequately, and that they did a good job of presenting the dangers that can come of it. It is difficult to escape a determined bully while online when so much of our lives anymore are centered around the internet.
I’d guess that the documentary is about five or six years old, judging by its reference to MySpacem as the other major social network rather than Twitter. However, the issues discussed within are still quite relevant even now. The internet is not a fad that will go away after a while, and it is essential that American society learns to adapt to this new Digital Age.
We live in an era of constant information constantly vying for our attention. Teachers need to know how to utilize the internet as a research and teaching tool, and being able to identify work plagiarized off the internet. Parents need to set limits for their children, and know how to keep their children safe while surfing the web. Universities and employers will continue to use social networks to monitor prospective applicants. Even if its performance was often lackluster, the documentary’s message is still very applicable: We need to adapt.
Videos
– Emma’s Story- Cyberbullied by former best friend
– Watch out cyber-bullies: Kids have new tools to fight back
– Cyberbullying Prevention Tips for Kids
– Parenting in the Internet Age
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Other Sources
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