The thought that has stuck out in my mind over and over again this week is that today’s kids are lucky. When I was younger, the internet was just becoming popular and most of us didn’t know how to use it safely or comprehend its full potential. My friends and I frequently talked to people we didn’t know in real life and shared way too much personal information with the internet world. And this was years before Facebook even made it so simple.
I think that kids and teenagers today are lucky because they know from the start that the internet isn’t always good and they are (hopefully) taught how to be more careful than I was when I was younger. Luckily nothing bad ever happened to my friends or me, but we were certainly naïve at the time. Our parents knew even less about the internet than we did, so they weren’t doing a very good job of monitoring what we were doing. It’s unfortunate that we have to operate out of fear now, but it can be a good thing if it is teaching kids to be safer.
4 comments:
Kids are really the trial blazers of the internet aren't they. If you think about all the digital knowledge they have and the way they can start companies and trends. It has given children a creative outlet that may not have been available to them before.
I've been pretty vocal this week about the role parents should play in the prevention of cyberbullying; what your comments remionded me is how much more my kids knew about the internet when they were in school. You make a good point: parents are likely to be ineffective if they don't really understand the technology and the far-reaching consequences of its use.
In an ideal world parents would take the time to learn and understand digital society in an effort to help their kids navigate the confusing, sometimes dangerous medium. In reality, though, it's just one more thing for a parent to fit between work, dinner, homework, giving rides to soccer practice, etc. Good point.
When I started using the Internet back in 1994, the number of people on the Internet obviously wasn't like it is today. The evolution of the content is grown by leaps and bounds and the ways in which people are now using the Internet could not even be comprehended back then. There weren't really people online to take advantage of one another and everyone was really trying to figure out "What is the Internet?". It is amazing how protective we need to be about going online. Firewalls, Anti-virus, content filters, and monitoring of activities. The digital world has definitely evolved and it is almost scary to think of where this whole thing is going.
My wife and I met because she was browsing on AOL profiles back in 1998 or 1999 (?) as an 8th grader an came across someone who had similar interests. He lived in Florida. She lived in Missouri. She IM'ed him. They talked a lot.
Fast forward to July 2010, and they're married. I still can't believe how things worked out. And yet it freaks me out to think that one day when we have kids, the same thing could happen to them--only with many more potential contacts since the web is so much larger now. Scary.
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