Response to 'Growing Up Online'

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kidsonline/

I feel that the Internet has both positive and negative influences on children. The Internet provides an extensive amount of useful resources for learning, researching, and self-expression. It just cannot be expressed how useful the Internet can be for children. As this video points out, however, for each of these advantages, the Internet has it's disadvantages as well. Of course sexual predators, cyberbullying, a child's rebellious behavior that is out of sight of their parents, and cheating are all causes for concern. Although these are all issues that are well worth worrying about, the Internet will not go away, and blaming computers and the Internet for our problems will not help at all. Instead, as addressed in this video, the important thing to note is that these issues need to be confronted. The best way to do this is to educate children on the proper uses of the Internet and to teach them how to use it responsibly, instead of in a negative way. Just as we teach our children to behave in a certain manner at home, in school, or anywhere in any public setting, we need to teach our children to behave in an acceptable manner online as well. This is not to say that we, as teachers or as parents, should be as overbearing as the PTO mother that we saw in this video, but we need to set behavioral expectations for out children/students to meet.