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jtee · 01-23-2008, 12:08 AM

[FONT='Verdana','sans-serif']FRONTLINE
http://www.pbs.org/frontline/

This Week: "Growing Up Online" (60 minutes),
Tuesday, Jan. 22 at 9pm on PBS (check local listings)
Live Discussion: Chat with producers Rachel Dretzin and John Maggio Jan. 23, 11am ET

This Tuesday's FRONTLINE comes with a warning for everyone who's never made a "friend" on MySpace, chatted with someone online, or sent a text message from a cell phone: You live in a very different world than the one in which a new generation is growing up, and this widening digital divide is becoming much more profound than anyone might have once imagined.

In "Growing Up Online," producers Rachel Dretzin and John Maggio take us inside the private worlds that kids are making on the Web, often outside the view, and comprehension, of the adults in their lives.

A teenage girl creates a new name and persona for herself and becomes an Internet celebrity from the privacy of her own bedroom. A lunch room fight gets broadcast nationally on YouTube. A ninth grader is relentlessly teased online and, tragically, is pushed to suicide by a friend's instant messages, setting his father on a journey through his son's hard drive to figure out what went wrong.

These are some of the film's more extreme and dramatic stories, but perhaps more provocative are some of the smaller moments: A high schooler matter-of-factly reports that he never reads books ("If there were 27 hours in a day, I'd read Hamlet," he says), and he's pretty sure that most of his fellow students don't read either. A young woman privately confesses that she's slipped into an online world of anorexics that she doesn't know how to escape. A boy logs onto a new Web site that aspires to be MySpace for the kindergarten crowd.

Throughout the film, parents hover nervously around their children's computers, teachers try hard not to wag their fingers at students who'd rather watch a podcast than write an essay, and academics try to understand what may be the greatest cultural shift in American history. But if you think the answers predictable, be prepared for the surprise of a teacher who thinks cheating might not be such a bad thing and a father who comes around to supporting the risque photographs that his teenage daughter had been secretly posting on the Web.

We hope you'll tune in to see how it all plays out on Tuesday night, and then join us online to watch it again, explore interviews with teachers and experts on teens and new media, and join our discussion at: http://pbs.org/frontline/kidsonline/ .[/font]

Kaytee · 01-23-2008, 07:24 AM

kindergarten myspace? Thats so scary. It scares me that parents are so trusting of their children and think that they can handle everything. In reality these kids needs parents who are setting the boundries and making sure they are not crossed.

jtee · 01-23-2008, 02:30 PM

I watched the show last night and thought it was very well done. I highly recommend that parents watch it on PBS or watch it on-line. The on-line version has it broken down into chapters\topics, so you can watch all of it, or only certain topics.

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

One example is they point out that kids (10+) are becoming very astute staying clear of unknown people who interested in sex. Kids on-line face harder problems such school bullies using the Internet to harass kids 24 hours a day; a child comes home from school to find his email filled with the nasty comments\threats from anonymous sources. They profile an anorexic 16 year old, who uses the Internet to talk about her problem openly with the Internet virtual world, but yet her parents know nothing about it.

The showed pointed out that while on-line sexual predators is a problem, the media makes it a bigger black-&-white issue than it is for kids. It's rare for some dirty old man to talk some naive 12-13 year old to meet him for sex. What is more common is for teens looking for on-line sexual experiences to get involved with others who are also looking to have on-line sexual experiences, and sometimes bad things happen as a result.

DivineInsanity · 01-25-2008, 08:38 AM

It's just scary! Things like that make me not want my children to ever go on-line. If I did it would be very restricted. I don't think I would let my children as teens have a computer with internet access in their room EVER. There is no need! Am I just mean? LOL
-Emily

PreSchool Mama · 01-25-2008, 01:56 PM

No way. You're not mean at all! My son is too young to be hooked on to the Net, but when he does get older, I plan on having the computer in the family room or something.

jtee · 01-25-2008, 02:07 PM

One interesting parallel this documentary makes is that for kids 10+ the on-line world is akin to the rise of Rock-n-Roll. Adults\parents don't connect with it in the same way. Like Rock-n-Roll, growing up on-line is perceived by parents as an inherently bad and corruptive influence. In this documentary, one mother is obsessed with controlling her teenagers on-line life, and for them, going on-line is one place they can get away from her well meaning, but intrusive, attempts to have complete knowledge of every aspect of their lives.

jenilouise · 01-26-2008, 01:47 AM

All computers in my house are in the lving room. I don't even have one in my bedroom. I monitor every site my kids are on and no internet if I am not there. The online world is a scary place.

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