Growing Up Online

No Surprise

• Our continuous use of YouTube.
• Youngsters playing social kid games like Club Penguin.
• Teenagers dedicating their time to upload videos to the web of them sharing their experiences and what they did in the day.
• Going away on vacations and keep on texting friends.
• Teenagers master technology while adults stay behind.
• Fooling adults to make them think you`re doing something else (productive) online.
• Schools wanting to be more tech-interactive to catch the students` attention.
• Our inability to focus.
• Teenagers looking for book summaries on the internet rather than read the actual books. (I've noticed this many times among my peers)
• Copy-pasting.
• Going online as soon as we get home.
• Using Facebook.
• Having thousands of online friends but only really knowing like 50.
• Cyber-bullying.
• Internet slang.

Surprise

• How the guys at the beginning didn't mind taking their heavy desktop computers just for some hours of computer video games with friends.
• How Club Penguin was actually that popular to appear in the video (I even remember playing it myself though)
• How the school in the video even had smartboards to catch the students` attention.
• The broadcasted classes for students to go back to them (I thought that was a great idea)
• We "don`t know what to do with ourselves" if we`re offline. I don't know about the rest but I have TONS of books I want to read and when I have even the shortest free time I like to spend it more on reading rather than going on Facebook, etc. 
• The parent on the video that said that it was easier to get his son's attention by emailing him rather than calling on him while at home.
• There are programs that help teachers tell if the student`s work is not "copy-pasted"
• How one of the teachers thought than if you look at it closely some aspects of our "copy-pasting" skills can be useful later on.
• Some teenagers recognized the risk of uploading pictures of themselves and limited it.
• How much Jessica changed herself to fit at least in the online society.
• How Jessica says she would have done anything to keep her secret identity safe AT AGE 14!
• How she assures that many girls in her school took very similar pictures that everybody knew of but only targeted Jessica as "the whore"
• How that mom was aware of internet stalkers, many parents don`t pay the slightest attention to what their sons and daugthers do on the internet and the risk of it.
• Internet stalkers being more vicious than those found in parks and other public places.
• The mom in the video asked her children to give her their Facebook passwords.

Changes

• We now own more laptops rather than desktop computers.
• We now have more modern and sophisticated video game consoles.
• MySpace isn`t as popular as before.
• Internet Explorer isn't as used as before. Now we have countless browers, some safer than others.
• Teenagers are online almost all the time now, since we have smartphones and light laptops to carry everywhere.
• Most of us have smartphones now.
• When looking for book summaries you now don´t only have Sparknotes, but thousands of websites can assist you on that.
• We don´t have to wait to get home and go online we have our smartphones for that.
• We don`t really have competitions for who has the most friends, now it`s more for who gets the most likes or comments on a profile picture. 
• Now it`s more like: who has more followers on Twitter and/or Instagram.
• We don`t upload videos of fights, we most likely take pictures or videos to make fun of a situation but not fights.
• Many parents don`t pay that much attention to all of the things their children do on the internet like the mom they presented in the video.
• Internet predators and stalkers are more common.
• Fighting off these predators is also more common and more effective nowadays.
• Many more schools and teachers have changed to tech tools and devices.

Questions

  

What topic in the video did you most strongly identify with and why?

I still don't get why would someone accept and unknown person in social websites. I never accepted anyone I didn't know when I had my Facebook and MSN obsession. Yet, a "predator" still got to me. A friend had accepted the person on MSN, kind of befriended him and in the end she got fooled and the person hacked her account, granting him access to other people's profiles and emails. He did the same to me because I thought I was talking to my friend, I even had my camera on. Since then I get the chills with just people mentioning "internet predators". It is very shocking how they have increased. I still recall how scared I was and sometimes I even keep warning my friends to be careful online.

What topic in the video was most UNLIKE your own experiences online and why? 

I never knew of anyone in my school that uploaded a video of people fighting. Maybe I was too young to know that stuff, to know about what the older kids did online at my school. I barely was online anyways. The thing I found most entertaining in my computer, as a 7 year old, was Paint and writing a short story in Word. I was really surprised at the kid with the same age in the video playing Club Penguin. I discovered it maybe around the time after this video/film was even made, when I was in 4th grade, but I also know it`s more common now. I barely log in to Facebook now, it's pointless. Every now and then I go on Skype with friends but I mostly use my computer now to look for books to read (Not summaries, BOOKS). I guess social networks have become less and less amusing to me, but I know many people still can't get over them.

What advice do you have for parents about kids and being online (should they worry, what about, should they monitor you, why or why not, what should they do?)

I would recommend parents to be aware of the risks, but not monitor their children 24/7 and wanting to have their passwords. Maybe have a chat with them to make them also aware and make clear what's safe and what's not. We should all be very careful, but I would hate my parents if they were behind me looking at my screen all the time. Many parents don't even care about what their kids do online and they should, but the example from the first 30 minutes of the film was a bit exaggerated. It's good for them to be aware and care, but not take it to that point. For younger kids, it might be a good idea to have parental blocks for safe browsing. They might look at an add on a website that's looks fun, click on it and end up in inappropiate websites.

Why wasn't this uploaded before...

The day we saw this video, many of the computers didn't have internet. The ones that did were being used to complete the assignment or my peers were occupying the seat in front of it, talking to each other. We had a short class and only got to about 30 minutes of the video, but I couldn't get most of it because some of the people in my class were talking, it was kind of hard to listen. I tried using my phone's hotspot, but it was atoo slow on my computer so I wrote down what I could on a Word doc and saved it. I forgot to post what I had, but I also thought it was useless to post 3 or 10 sentences when at least 45 sentences would get me a 4. However, today after I talked with you and got home I found this link to the video so I watched it again until the part we left off. I was able, then, to complete my poor notes.