The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
ÒApparently the Internet is not the soul-sucking swamp for kids that many people thing it is.Ó David Weinberger, the Harvard professor and author of multiple books, had this to say last week after reading several new and important reports that have recently been released on teenagers and the Internet. For years, adults had very little good to say about kidsÕ habits online. Teenagers spent way too much time online doing what seemed like nothing and one of the main job that parents had was to find ways to get their kids off of their computers. In the meantime, they also worried about what they were doing online. The news was filled with stories of predators and dangers. But the problem was that their was no solid research. No one had ever actually completed any studies to see what was going on. So, suddenly last week, when there were two major reports released on the Internet use habits of teenagers, the media was all over them looking for where they could jump in. But they were disappointed by what they found. Both of these reports had very little damaging to say. For example, one report talked about cyberbullying and the danger of predators. While it did acknowledge that online bullying is an issue and cannot be ignored, it also said that these behaviours rapidly declined once students reached about the age of 15. Interestingly, this report stated that while over half of grade seven students are victims of ÒtraditionalÓ bullying, only 25 per cent of them ever face cyberbullying. The same is true of the dangers around online predators. While many students do say that they had been propositioned online, only a very, very small number of them ever faced any danger in the real world. In fact, the report called the number of teens who actually were accosted by strangers Òstatistically insignificant.Ó While it can be difficult to tell who someone is online, most teens who were propositioned believe that the person they were talking to was under 18 years old. The danger of older men luring younger males and females while online can be real, and horrible and tragic stories do exist; but the fact is that most people on the Internet will never encounter this type of behaviour. These reports went on to describe what students are actually doing online is all of the stuff that we used to do offline. Mostly they are just hanging out with friends. Sometimes they are working. Other times they are learning new things from people who are like them. One of the greatest benefits of Internet use reported by teens was that being online allowed them to find people who were like them. Living in small communities like ours, many teens feel isolated by their interests. They may be the only person in their place who is interested in photography or astronomy or a whole host of other things. In the past, of course, these people had no one they could turn to for advice or to teach them. With the Internet, that is no longer true, and many teens reported learning a new skill or working with someone whom they considered to be a mentor. None of this is to say that we donÕt need to teach our kids to be safe online and to use common sense. But the media has been distorting the facts far out of shape when it comes to teenagers and their online habits. It always bothers me whenever there is a shooting or other violent incident and the media immediately turns to Facebook or MySpace and finds a page set up by the person involved, and then blames the Internet for what happened. This is simply backwards. The person did not perform the act because of the Internet; they are on the Internet because almost everyone under the age of 30 has an account set up someplace online. This is like blaming telephones or television for the same thing. Particularly if you are involved with youth in any way, I would encourage you to download your own free copies of these reports and take a look at them for yourself. They are titled ÒOnline Threats to YouthÓ and ÒLiving and Learning with New Media.Ó ([email protected]) Tech Notes runs Mondays.
