"Growing Up Online"

I went to http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kidsonline/ and followed the link called "Watch the Full Program Online," where I watched a PBS video called "Growing Up Online." Nothing in the video really surprised me that much because I have heard about the dangers and problems of spending too much time online. However, I do think the video is misleading in how big of a problem this is. Yes, there have been cases of bullying and predators, and we should take those seriously. However, this video seemed to interview kids that were much more addicted to the internet than most people I know. Most of the people I know have a facebook, and they admit that they spend too much time on it. But, I don't believe facebook replaces face-to-face contact. If anything, it keeps people in contact with each other enough that they can use facebook to keep updated on the basics of their friends' lives so that they will have something to talk about when they meet up face to face. I have the passwords to a couple of my friends' facebook accounts, and I do go on them, but I don't have my own facebook account and I don't want one. I feel like it would be too much work. I prefer seeing my friends regularly and talking on the phone. While I'm sure that there are people in the world who are online as much as the video says, I don't think it is something everybody, or even most people, do to that extent.

Like Jenny said in her blog at http://atejenniper.blogspot.com/ I think it can be a problem when kids are uneducated about the internet, but it is easy to educate them. I once had a teacher who said that she never typed anything into a computer that she didn't want read over the announcements at school. If kids are shown how open the internet is, I think they can be smart enough to protect themselves in most situations, which is a point the video eventually made.

In Brittney's blog at http://brittneynow.blogspot.com/ she said that she worried about the impact of the internet on her future students. I agree that the internet can be very dangerous. However, we know that technology is constantly changing, and in a couple years when we are teachers, the internet will be a completely different place from what it is now. Now that all of these problems are being researched, there may be enough awareness that some of the dangers can be fixed.

I really like how Emily mentioned in her blog at http://edirks.blogspot.com/ that we can't blame the internet for all of our problems. I agree with that. The internet is just bringing problems to light, and possibly making them worse, but overall, the problems existed before the internet. 10 years ago, kids were still bullied and people still committed suicide. The internet makes it easier for this to happen, which is a problem, but we should realize that these problems existed before the internet, and so only handling the problems that the internet causes will not get rid of all the problems.