Growing Up in an Online World...

After watching the film, Growing Up Online, I was shocked, appalled, and then I got over it. I think about these young people and say "they're crazy", or "what possessed them to do that?", or "what are they thinking"? The most frightening thing about this film is that these kids are just like me, just like I was. Frontline represents issues in a hard-hitting way, yet there is a great wealth of truth in this documentary. Growing up with social networking and the Internet have positive gains involved, however these technologies effect lifestyle not necessarily for the better.

Most of what I saw in the video came at no surprise. Fights beginning online and carrying through to the real world happened while I was in high school. People social networked, IM'd, and Chatted all the time. This is a common thing to me. In today's society, among young people, it is the norm. What struck me as out of the ordinary is the weight these sites have on teens lives. The involvement of these teens is the issue. I am not against students and teens being involved in social networking, but when one goes as far as to have a secret identity, or rather when one is living a double lifestyle of sorts, that becomes and issue.

Vanity is extremely prevalent within teen lifestyle and in American society as a whole. There is a constant promotion of the self, which helps to feed this social networking kick because essentially, that is what it is; Reinventing yourself so that you are someone else, or someone that you want to be. Everyone is trying to be original, unique, and different, and when everyone is, no one will be.

In keeping with the double lifestyles that teens entertain and when thinking about teens as they build their identity, the Web 2.0 is a place for rediscovery, secrets, and other unheard of things. When the young girl mentioned that she secretly battled with anorexia, I was stunned. This is a girl who has everything going for her, but has this secret that the Web 2. 0 keeps for her.

I also realized that cyber-bullying was a very serious issue in the lives of American teens, so much so that one would kill himself to be rid of the humiliation. I was so deeply hurt when they shared the story of that young boy who killed himself because people were talking about him in school, harassing him online, and playing cruel tricks on him. One wouldn't think that this was anything to die over, but if people would only look back and think about how difficult the pressures were during middle and high school, they would understand that for a young person it is a lot to deal with.

Now, what I begin to consider is where these young people are getting ideas from. What messages are being sent that make young people assume that these things are OK? The media tend to put out messages that portray a lifestyle that is not the "norm" as if it were, "the norm", causing students and teens to be pressured to act in a way that is not really the norm, and in a manner that is not necessarily a positive contribution to their lifestyles. Teens, tweens, and young adults are the target audience of advertisers because this is the most lucrative group. This is business and is a part of the capitalistic democracy we live in. However, the means to which advertisers promote and get private information that drives their campaigns is where the technicalities come in to play. Data mining is the process by which businesses, organizations, or whoever find patterns in private data that give information on what people like and how to target specific groups of people.

Through networking sites such as Facebook, Myspace, and others encourage dual lifestyles that are not necessarily positive. Both of these networking sites have applications that are ways of advertising, and allow for advergames to be on their sites. I know at one point I found myself playing a game that was clearly an advertisement just because I was board. These games are ways for advertisers to gather information on you from your computer, and a way of viral marketing.

Ultimately, I feel that what people do is their business. The problem is that these people are not even grown, full fledged citizens yet. This being stated, I believe that much of the reasons for these lifestyles and the corruption of our young people by the Web 2.0 technology has to do with parenting, and with what parents allow. I mentioned earlier that these kids remind me of myself, but I for one had limits that were set by my mother as to how long I could be on the Internet, for what, and they were just real with me about the possibilities, positive and negative, that can occur online.