Growing up Online

Things that did not surprise me

1.       Children know more about technology than their parents

2.       Teenagers are not reading books anymore, instead look for summeies  in sparknotes

3.       When school is over most teenagers go to social media networks

4.       Everybody: geeks, nerds and popular people have facebook or myspace

5.       Many have competition of having the most friends

6.       Fights began happening online

7.       Relationships are online, but do not interact in school or actually see each other many times

8.       People have different identities online than how they really are in person or high school life

9.       Parents don’t know their children’s online identities

10.   Teenagers mostly know how to handle sexual comments and prepositions

11.   Some teenagers feel that they are able to express themselves online

12.   Parents don’t know about the websites their children go to (anorexia websites)

13. Words hurt and affect teenagers. Constantly reading them makes many believe it  

14. Cyberbullying is way more common than physical bullying nowadays

15.  Parents are very concerned about their children and the internet, they often look for ways to protect them

Things that surprised me

1.       AOL can allow parents to see what their children are doing on the internet

2.       Children have more trouble focusing now than 30 years ago becaues of the itnernet

3.       Turn it in is a website that looks for papers that have been copied off the internet

4.       Parents fear online stalkers or predators

5.       There is a computer safety unit

6.       Teenagers should be looked as participants and not victims

7.       Teenagers who want to be anorexic praise the goddess Ana

8.       When there was video of a group of teenagers went to a concert , most of them were vomiting

9.       A child killed himself when he was about in 7^th grade. Ryan had been victim of cyberbulling with the rumor that he was gay.

10.   Girls that flirt with boys and then tell them that it is nothing

11.   There are websites of how to kill yourself and the best ways you can commit suicide

12.   Educators blame the internet for increase of student’s cheating

13.   Parents blame the social media for their children’s behavior

14.   Many children have been suspended from schools from cyberbullying

15.   A graduate student has realized how much he spends in the internet and decided to leave it for two months

Things that changed

1.       Bring desktop computers with monitors to each others home

2.       Using Myspace

3.       Club Penguin

4.       The phones

5.       Video cameras

6.       The video games and Xboxes have improved

7.    Youtube

8.    iPods

9.    Programs and websites

10.   Computer Viruses 

11.   Sparknotes have more variety of book summeries and have more users than before

12.   Many people who read books don't use hardcover anymore, they use kindles

13.   CNN has been changed since then

14.   Smartboards have changed and improved

15.   There is more anorexic awareness and young girls are being taught other ways to take care of their body

What topic in the video did you most strongly identify with and why?

I think that parents try to control their children's access to internet and websites, thinking many of us are naive of the dangers there are. I relate to many teenagers who get mad at their parents because they want passwords and their activity online. In my opinion we have more knowledge of what goes on in the internet than they do. We have grown up with the internet and its dangers. We have heard the stories about predators thousands of times. Having said this, I think that if parents know that their children are not troublesome , they should have more confidence that we won't do anything stupid online. They should not try to control us because frankly, with technology and internet being everywhere, they will not be able to.

What topic in the video was the most UNLIKE your own experience online and why?

I don't think I would ever log in to a website that based on your personality, tells you the best way you can kill yourself. I don't think the creators of this tests online are aware of the negative impact they are having in the live's of many young and sad teenagers who view them every day. I use the internet to do other things and since I don't have a lot of free time, I like to use it well. Besides the fact that I am happy with my life, I don't trust many people who give advises online. After all, you don't really know them. People tend to say things online that they would never tell you face to face.

What are the biggest benefits of being online?
There are many benefits that the internet has brought to our lives. It is used as a tool for doing homework, for socializing and for discovering. There are so many positive aspects to the internet that it is very hard to name only one that I think is the most beneficial for me. Personally, being online has allowed me to stay in touch with friends I have in other countries. Having social networks make it so much easier to speak to friends I leave behind and therefore make the whole moving to another country a thousand time more easier. If there wasn't any internet, it would be most likely that I would lose contact with them. The only way possible to talk to them would be through mail, and given the distance between the countries I've lived, it would take long enough to forget about it. The internet has opened so many doors to this new generation and will keep helping and making future generation's lives easier.