Molly Scott
Feb. 7, 2010
Reading Response
English 100 A

“Growing up Online”

Growing up on line was a documentary video that presents the viewer with good and bad reasons for letting teenagers freely go on the internet into their own secret world. This movie really put me into a different mood towards the internet; I knew that there was always the issue of sexual predators online, so I thought that this was just going to be another warning about how to stay away from them. However this movie was a different story, it opened my eyes to different issues that are presented on the internet. I now know that people are being bullied horribly worse on the internet or instant messaging, then any one would be at school. I knew that girls were posting pictures of them selves that we not appropriate for other people to be seeing (with out it being called pornography), but I didn’t know that it was a way of leading their own lives, and having their own better life. So like I said before, this video presented me with two different ideas about the internet. I’ve realized that it all depends on the emotional level of the person experiencing internet, rather then what is being presented to them on the internet; peoples lives at school usually depends on how they are going to act on the internet. For some people the internet can be a great way to really show who you are, and what you think of your self. For some, it is a scary place where people can tell you exactly what they mean to say that they could never say at school, it’s like drug for teenagers. Once this drug is taken, we (the teenagers) can’t resist it, we are taken by what it can offer, then after a while with out the internet, we seem to think that our lives will disappear.

I am personally affected by the internet, I hate it but I am. I find myself constantly checking my email and facebook. It all started when I was twelve years old with MySpace, and I hate it that it started that early for me. It has not affected me in all bad ways but I believe that my own self image is affected. For me personally I would just look at the other girl’s pictures of them looking hot and sexy and then I would try to look like that, and I wasn’t showing my self. I would Photoshop my pictures and make my self look skinnier, or tanner. I was never showing anyone my self, I was lying to my self so I stopped and changed. I though that being myself would make people not like me, but really it just made life a lot easier and I always just felt a lot better about my self. Sadly other girls cant always say the same thing, pictures of a schoolmate drinking at parties and smoking pot just make innocent people want to be “cool”. What they don’t realize is that not being your self is not cool, it’s fake. Girls all over the world are anorexic, bulimic, insecure, depressed, and angry about their own self image and the internet is totally to blame. At this point, we are all smart enough to stay away from offenders and some are smart enough to stay away from bad influences. I feel like there is nothing that people can do to help us though, it all depends on kids home or school lives, depending on what’s going on, that is how they are going to treat people and take the way that they are being treated. All I can say for parents is that they should try to find ways to keep up self image and confidence because in the long run that is the only thing that matters for us (teenagers) in this world of “perfection”.