PBS Presentation

The PBS Frontline Presentation "Growing up Online" documents the generational gap between us, the "facebook generation" and our parents, teachers, and older comrades alike caused by our having grown up on the internet. Specifically mentioned were the effects of social networking websites such as myspace, facebook, twitter, and the like. Our generation uses activities (friend requests, comments, picture comments, etc.) on these social networking sites as currency for popularity and merit in the real world offline. Besides peer networking and communication, kids these days are just more easily accessible through the use of the internet, i.e. just plain e-mailing (or even text messaging via cell phones), than IRL. Parents often feel isolated from their own children and teachers find it difficult to reach the students they are teaching. The main issue? Parents aren't involved much on social networks, and they aren't as invested in the new technology. Students are often better experienced with computers, TVs, and cell phones than their teachers, making for a skewed dynamic between the two parties. Plainly said: if students are much more able to work a major type of media than their teacher, they have more "power" in a sense, and it creates conflict in the classroom. For example, every student has at least one horror story of a teacher trying to show a video during class but wasting 20-30 minutes trying to access Youtube instead.

Another problem is that parents think this new form of communication through social media is "bad."

To us, it is just a way of communication; though it isn't to traditional way our parents did does not necessarily make it wrong. True, communicating in this virtual online world is quite different from that of our parents' networking, it shouldn't be the cause of such a huge rift between the two generations.

In fact, it would be much of a help in the development of young kids of today if the older generation was more involved on networking sites. That way, they would have firsthand experience with the dark parts of the "interwebs" that lead to bullying and low self-esteem in our generation. The example used in the presentation was "thinspo" blogs, which encourage anorexia (or being "pro ana) by glorifying pictures of emaciated women and men and targeting young teens. A teacher can't possibly help look for warning signs bullying  in her students if she doesn't understand cyberbullying: since it isn't obvious like physical bullying, there are different red flags that a teacher wouldn't example understand unless she was experienced on social networks.

There is indeed a schism between generations here that isn't necessarily a "fault" of ours or a "problem" that so many of the older generation see it as. If the older generation would see the positive side of social networking sites, they'd be more inclined to think of facebook as a tool to build frienships and less of a time-waster. However, our generation must not let itself become so entwined in the online world that they neglect responsibilities of the real world.