Crying Shame
It is no secret that teenagers (and pre-teens) everywhere are remarkably more internet savvy than ever before. With sites like the hated Facebook, MySpace, and Xanga, the internet is making it easier for kids to create their own websites. Forget that they are not 18, you can sign up as long as you are 13 years old and have a valid email address. Facebook, which launched in 2004 for colleges, now allows High School students to sign up using their school email addresses. I, for one, am already sick of hearing about Facebook and how "omg, I totally found this kid that I went to grade school with like 100 years ago and he is totally married now and has 2 kids already, what a loser..." And I only hang out with college graduates (well, and 8th graders but I have yet to bring the subject of blogging up with them).
These websites allow teens to post pictures of themselves and talk in exhaustion of their private lives. The content is apalling. And these blogs are hardly anonymous. Facebook obviously has all the kids from one school grouped together, as does Xanga. Additionally, with Xanga and MySpace, you don't need to have an account to view blogs. I believe that teenagers thrive on attention. They have always been this way, I admit to being this way as a teen. They want to be accepted. They want to be understood. They want to be noticed. According to this article posted yesterday in the Washington Post, one girl stated:
"I'm in seventh grade," the girl said. "It's really hard to be in seventh grade these days. It's really hard if you're shy and you're not a cheerleader or extraordinarily popular. I travel, I take pictures, I write poetry. I'm a nice kid, and if I can write a profile that will make people notice me, why shouldn't I?"
The article then points out that kids are posting information on websites where "potentially 700 million people can see it in order to attract the attention of a kid two seats down." Not to mention they can create a whole new persona and become anyone they want to be on the internet, "A kid with a boring life can go on to MySpace and become a punk rocker in two minutes."
Of course there is major concerns with online sexual enticements and solicitation, which 1 in 5 children will be approached with, but there is also the concern of false boldness. They are saying and doing things online that they would never do in real life. They face just as much peer pressure online as they do at school, if not more, only it is easier to fabricate the truth. It is cool to tell stories about drunken weekend escapades and about the feeling you get from certain drugs, when in reality, these things never happened.
What are the answers to all these problems? Stricter guidelines for age? Content? More parental controls on the internet? There is only so much that schools can do to restrict computer usage. Does this mean that the problem is at home? Do you even think that there is a problem? What can be done?
posted by Karyn @ 8:15 AM
4 comments
4 Comments:
the problem is definitly at home and always has been. you can only put so many restictions on kids at school, and that rarly helps anyway. solving domistic issues is nearly impossible these days, but it cant be impossible to change the world can it?
The medium has changed but the issue is still the same: how have you raised your kids, how have you modeled how life should be lived for them? In many ways, blogs and websites bring new, scary dangers, but in the end, it's about the decisions your kid chooses to make when you're not watching. Schools should make some rules, just as they should every time something new pops up that interferes or interacts with education, but Jeremy's right...too many rules and restrictions never work.
The importance of internet safety is not license for out-of-bounds institutional 'parenting' that violates students' first amendment rights. It is not the school's place to regulate how teenagers express themselves off-campus.
Posting personal information online does incur a risk, a risk that increases exponentially as the information gets more specific and detailed. But should schools ask primary school students to leave if they talk to strangers? The line between freedom and security is notoriously tricky to draw, but if it is anyone's place to set limits for children when it comes to risk-taking, it is the parents', not the school's or the state's.
Granted, an awful lot of adolescent weblogs are tacky, petty, risk-inviting wastes of webspace, but freedom of expression also covers the right to talk without actually saying anything-- because what is appropriate or worthy of an audience is generally a matter of opinion, to be left up to the discretion of individual writers and readers.
Imagine if the printing press had been banned or otherwise stepped on, because, god forbid, suddenly authors could reach too many readers (how sad that he must write a bestselling masterpiece just to get the attention of his small town!) who would then be aware of the author's existence, thus creating a safety hazard. Likewise, if seven-hundred million people read a student's blog, who are we to take away the student's right to express himself or the readership's right to consume the information offered freely therein?
Weblogs are among the most, if not the most, accessible and widely read means of expression available today. Unless what is being written directly and demonstrably infringes on the rights of another individual, it is out of order for an outside official body to take disciplinary action in order to shut down the activity.
Institutionalized censorship is hardly a good example to set for our youth.
In my opinion, Facebook is another outlet for popularity contests. Who has the most friends? Who has the most pictures from the coolest party last weekend? Who's dating who? Don't kids deal with that enough at school?
Bottome line, I don't think it's appropriate for teenagers.
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