Overall this movie was a source of amusement because it made the internet seem poisonous to young adults. In the case of the girl who was anorexic, if she hadn't found the websites about anorexia online, she probably would have been able to find them elsewhere. I think that parents like the one in the video need to just relax and accept that they live in a world where their children are growing up with the internet and that it is a necessary for them to communicate with others and themselves.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Is the internet really that bad?
I really enjoyed watching that movie in class, not only because it switched things up a bit, but it also was a sort of comic relief. I thought the story with the "helicopter mom" was hilarious and really reached home for me because my mom is a mild case of "helicopter mom". She is always asking me about my life, and has only recently given up in getting information out of me. All she has to do is wait, and I usually tell her at the right time. I think the woman in the film was too extreme in her fight against the internet. If it's not the internet, it's going to be something else. Every teenager needs a place to let out steam and the internet is, in a way, a safe place to do so. I don't think it was fair of that boy's mom to expect him to open up to her so much. After all, before computers, kids wrote in diaries and many of them had locks. Isn't a lock the same thing as a password?
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While I agree that the helicopter mom in the video was a bit too extreme, I don't necessarily think that parents should just relax and let children do whatever they want on the Internet. I think that parents have the right to be concerned with what their children are looking at, especially with the potentially dangerous material out there today. Yes, the anorexic girl might have found the information elsewhere but if it wasn't all in that website, she would have probably had to spend more time trying to find it, whereas with a click of a button, she has immediate access to all of this information on how to hurt herself.
ReplyDeleteOn the Internet nowadays, we can find anything from videos telling us how to make homemade bombs to instructional articles on how to cheat on tests to a seemingly endless barrage of "shock" videos and pictures. I'm strongly against most censorship, but I do think that parents have the responsibility to place limits on what a child can see on the Internet. True, a child could go and learn how to make a bomb elsewhere but can he immediately show 50 friends how in a matter of seconds, like he would if he just sent an e-mail with the link?
I know, as a student who is still pretty dependent on my parents, I would have never wanted my mom and dad to see what I was doing online. I wasn't doing anything bad necessarily; I just liked having privacy. Looking back however, I do feel that my parents should have intervened more and helped me prevent some of the mistakes I made.
I have to agree with Thomas on this. As a victim of "cyber-bullying" and a friend of a victim of solicitation, I have to say that parents should definitely not just relax about things like this. I think that parents should sit down with their children and go over ground rules. I know my parents did after my "attack" and it made everything more manageable and a lot more emotionally/physically safe for me.
ReplyDeleteYes, parents can definitely go too far - the helicopter mom was just ridiculous. I think there needs to be a change in the way we view the internet, especially for the younger aged kids (those twelve year olds who are sitting at coffee shops on their iPhones, talking to seven different people at a time on seven different websites or applications). I know that sounds like I'm a parent myself, but as a victim, I don't want anyone to feel the way I did. They just need to realize that there are real threats out there - they seem to just take their safety for granted.
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