Today’s Kids Do It Totally Wired
Posted by Greg Writer on April 11, 2007
Internet expert Anastasia Goodstein said last night that today’s kids are just like kids from earlier eras, except that they are totally wired. Ms. Goodstein, author of the new book Totally Wired: What Teens And Tweens Are Really Doing Online, spoke at Cody’s Books in Berkeley, California.
Ms. Goodstein said that society is in a panic about the Internet’s influence on the lives of the younger generation. She wrote her book to serve as a “voice of reason” and to provide “a more balanced view of what’s going on.” Her book’s theme is that kids are doing all the things that they always have done, just digitally.
Goodstein detailed a typical day in the life of a modern teenager, which begins with turning on a computer, checking e-mail, flipping on Itunes, checking text messages, heading to school with a cell-phone against her ear, using a computer at school to conduct research, coming home and logging into LiveJournal to continue a conversation begun at school, and finally paging through MySpace to get the latest gossip and goings-on about her circle of friends. If it is a Saturday night and the typical teen goes to a party, she gets a text messages from a friend (also at the party) about how another friend is drinking too many beers at the party. If mom calls to ask her where she is, she answers her cell phone and says she is at a friend’s, studying for the SAT.
Parents and teachers are more or less clueless about this new, wired world. What parents need to know, said Goodstein, is that kids are using all these digital forums to seek validation, gain peer approval, find out who they are and express themselves. It is the modern form of “individuation.”
Even though kids are acting like kids have always acted, the wired world does present new dangers. For example, Goodstein said that teens do not really understand that everything they do online is public. This lack of understanding can hurt a kid’s job prospects.
Thus a teenage girl may put something risque on her MySpace profile, and a teenage boy may put something stupid, like a picture of himself throwing up after drinking too much at a party (maybe the same party at which someone sent a text message to a friend about another friend having too many beers). They don’t realize that a prospective employer will Google their name before an interview and potentially turn up tons of embarrissing information, information that was merely funny when posted on MySpace. “Young people are learning this lesson the hard way,” Goodstein said.
Goodstein was also very troubled by cyber space harassment. Kids will put up “slam” pages when they get angry at someone, be it a fellow student or even a teacher. She described one incident where two high school students, angry at a teacher, put up a page saying that the teacher had engaged in unorthodox sexual activities with a flute. The whole school ended up seeing the page, the teacher got wind of it, and the students were expelled. In an earlier era, there would have only been a note passed in class, mocking the teacher. Today, there is a web page potentially seen by the entire community.
Goodstein concluded her talk by saying that it is up to parents to educate their kids about the dangers of the net. She said monitoring and filtering software is helpful, but the best monitor is a human monitor. She also suggested that parents limit the amount of time they allow kids to spend on the net. Even Bill Gates, she noted, sets strict limits for his 10 year old child. The veritable Father of the PC allows only forty-five minutes a day during the week, and one hour on Saturdays and Sundays.
If you wish to learn more about this new, totally wired world, and to educate yourself so you can educate your kids, Goodstein’s new book is an excellent resource.
