Gowing Up Online Video response- Sandi Garofano

Sandi Garofano

#5.  Do parents have any today have any idea of what their kids are doing online? Whose job is it to teach safety?  Parents/School/Government/Community?

Frontline “Growing Up Online”  www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kidsonline/view

Digital Nation- Follow up, www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/view

After viewing the video “Growing Up online”, I thought about my years as a teen and the exposures to various things that I did as a teen that parents may have considered dangerous or irresponsible.  But we as teens thought them as ways of expressing ourselves, gaining our autonomy from authority figures, making decisions for ourselves whether right or wrong it was how we learned about our world. 

Although thinking back, my world was much smaller than it is now.  I had my immediate community, few close friends, hung out at one another’s homes, or the only city park, and neighbors that kept an eye on you and told your parents anything you did wrong. But now, in the 21^st century our world has grown far past our own backyards and seemingly safe communities. We have grown distant within our own communities yet, we are interconnected in a broader sense through digital media at any time of the day or night. 

The video brings up some real concerns, children are able to expose themselves in any way they want and most parents do not even know what children are doing online.  The digital age has given children a way to become whatever they want including creating a pseudo-persona that could allow a teen such as the girl Tiffany, age 14 to create a world that she could fit in, right in her own bedroom, to express herself in and be accepted in when otherwise in her true daily life, she did not fit into and felt that she didn’t belong. Her parents did not have a clue.

  The online world is also a constant so as not to have reprieve from the evilness of others that can torment a child through cyberbullying which it expressed in the video, has led to children taking their own lives because they could not get away from the bullying or to predators.     

  The real concern is there seems to be no way to monitor and control what children are doing online. Or is there?  As a parent of now grown sons, I made it my concern to know what my sons were up to and involved in. They learned the difference of right and wrong behaviors early on. What was socially accepted behaviors and not.  They also had to learn consequences for their behaviors.  It was my job as a parent to give them the tools early on and continue the hard and seemingly endless fight to follow through with conviction so my sons would become good citizens in the future.   I believe that all children will test the limits, and explore risky behaviors, it’s the course of nature. 

 I see children that have too much freedom and lack responsibility for their behaviors.  What I see and experienced, is that parents need to be involved on various levels with their children especially in the teen years.  Too many parents are unaware for many reasons, parents are busy themselves perhaps with their jobs, high stress life, lack parental control, lack patience and follow through.

 In the video the mom of the Skinner family was very involved by trying to control where her children used the computer, serving on the parent board and even bringing awareness to together parents of an event that caused her son to become angry at her for “ruining “ his school social life.  But, she as parent understood that it is her responsibility as a parent to teach, guide, and protect her children and others.   

 Growing up online is a great opportunity for our children and yet a dangerous one.  Children are joining social media at a younger age and are smarter than most adults because they have been immerged in various media and can be taught proper online safety and edict from their parents and in school.  Schools can monitor its programs by educating the teachers and students and placing monitor system to base where students are going on the internet. This is especially needed for the middle school age because they are still developing social skills and should be monitored more closely. In High school level, should be some monitoring to make sure students are using approved sites.    But ultimately, parents should be the monitors of their children’s online activity and social media and keep a constant presence and communication with their children and their schools.