Ian Barbour's Growing up online response

Ian Barbour
English 100
Anna Wolf
February 7th 2010

Growing up Online Response

I thought the “growing up online” video produced by Rachel Dretzin and John Maggio was very entertaining, it had a lot of interesting stories. However I find that this was not a good representation of how internet has affected kids. They seemed to exaggerate how much the internet was used and found a few key examples where it had a devastating effect on it's users. I am sure you could find just as many examples of how TV or video games or even the pressures of school had take over some teenagers life's. This wouldn't really bug me except that first of all they stated many times how these were just examples but this was going on all over the place, like this was the normal behaviors of internet users. And 2nd because the video was clearly made for parents. If the video was just showing teens look this could happen if you go over board on the internet use, that would be OK, but to try to convince parents that the internet is this evil corrupting force is irresponsible of them and is annoying for us teens who just got done convincing our parents no one online is going to be able to kidnap us.
If I were to create my own video to show how online media and use has affected me I think it would be a much better representation of the average teenager. I might be on the internet a lot, but it's just a different way of doing things that past generations have been doing for years. Like if I go on to a social media site it will most likely be to just quickly check up with my friends and then maybe make plans. I do not spend all day on face book like the “growing up online” video would like you to think, I spend maybe 10-20 minutes checking face book a day. The rest of my online time I will be listening to music, watching movies or television shows, or playing online games or reading the news or researching for my homework and sometimes I even research things on my own time due to curiosity. These are all things the past generations have done, just because I am doing them online does not all the sudden make them bad or dangerous. The only affect internet has made on my life is that I can do all these things from the convenience of my home. Being able to stay home seems like an obviously safer way of doing things, people just fear change. And this is why I do not like how Frontline is selling this fear to the parents who want to believe this change is somehow dangerous.