Growing Up Online PBS Presentation

There were many issues raised in the PBS presentation “Growing Up Online” there are issues of cyber bulling, online predators, creating a whole other identity through social networking sites such as MySpace, and learning in the classroom.

These issues were very tragic at times for example when they spoke about the boy named Ryan Halligan who committed suicide in October of 2003 after suffering bulling issues both in school and online. Communicating with another boy who also wanted to commit suicide also contributed to Ryan’s suicide because they would send messages to one another talking about how there was no other way and basically supporting one another. It was a very sad and unfortunate story because Ryan was very young and shows how the Internet has the capability to connect us with not only good influences but also bad influences.

Another example of children finding a bad influences online is a girl named Sara who likes to posts as a way of self expression, sends revealing photos to her boyfriend through the internet, and talks about connecting to a website that supports people who are trying to lose a significant amount of weight due to their eating disorder. The Internet can provide a lot of detrimental material for young people or for any user for that matter, however there are also vast amounts of knowledge that can be gained from the Internet as well.

A great example of this goes on in the classroom and how many students use websites to cheat such as Sparknote.com that summarizes an entire novel to be able to understand it by reading it in under minutes. They also talk about how classrooms have upgraded from using black boards to smart boards that is basically a large computer screen. They also have pod cast available for their students for they can revisit them later and multiple times. I believe that this is very good for the future of learning because technology can get a lot of things done faster and can also provide new ways for students to understand ideas such as using videos or enlarged pictures.

In the case of Jessica Hunter she created a new persona named Autumn Edows that transformed her from a shy and awkward person into a sensual Goth model. She had no friends, was bullied, felt alienated from society. Through this new identity Jessica gained this sense feeling beautiful, famous, and just different. This shows how the Internet gives anyone the power to reinvent himself or herself and how other others see them. But for Jessica it ultimately turned out to be a positive experience for her because it did help her gain confidence and a way to create and reach out to others like herself.

Finally Evan Skinner is a concerned parent about online predators and just safety in general when it comes to her 4 teenagers. She keeps her computer in her kitchen where she can supervise them .She talks about how her children like to keep secrets from her and how her children refuses to hand over their passwords to their social media sites. I believe that the children should hand over their passwords because the mother here had a very fair way of going about it about sealing the envelope and only opening it when they are in trouble which sounds very secure and fair.

This whole presentation brought up many strong issues and challenges that the Internet can bring upon people especially young people, but the Internet also gives people a new dimension in terms of exploring oneself and allows us to learn in a new way that is faster.

Adriana Ochoa