Week #3: Documentary Discussion -- The Wild Wild West

Near the beginning of the 2008 PBS documentary, Frontline: Growing Up Online, one technology expert describes the internet as the Wild West. It's an image that sticks with you through the hour-long film, which examines the way the internet has thoroughly re-shaped the lifestyle of the average young person. Almost without warning, the internet has opened a new frontier for young people, one that is unimaginably expansive, fraught with real and imagined dangers and minimally policed. The follow-up 2010 film, Frontline: Digital Nation, continues he "frontier" motif but presents new and very different dilemmas that have recently sprung up in the rapidly changing world of technology. Where Growing Up Online focuses largely on the social issues surrounding internet use among young people and the generational gap it has opened up, Digital Nation examines how the internet's many-tentacled grip may be fundamentally changing the way people think, learn and interact.

Digital Nation posits that the new multi-tasking lifestyle born of the internet and the many digital gadgets available to consumers could be altering the way our brains work -- and not necessarily for the better. As someone who has always struggled with "staying on task," I find the notion of internet-induced attention deficit disorder very believable. In the time I watched the two films for this assignment and wrote just these first two paragraphs, I have interrupted myself at least 20 times to check my e-mail, send a text message, look at my Facebook page and look up random things only tangentially connected to the topic at hand. I have also been interrupted by my kids several times, and it is their development that concerns me more than my own stunted attention span. Along with being part of the "wired" generation, they are also part of the instant-everything generation, and I wonder if they will struggle all their lives with focusing on difficult tasks and working patiently to complete them.

Another worry for many parents and educators is the possibility of technology addiction. Both Growing Up Online and Digital Nation offer examples of young people who have all but disappeared into social networking sites and virtual worlds. Given the tremendous pressures young people face and the malleability of their minds, I think technology addiction is a valid concern for parents and educators. Whether or not it meets the critieria of a clinical addiction seems somewhat immaterial: If a young person is spending virtually all her waking hours living a make-believe life, we adults ought to be alarmed.

But even as it presents us with new and sometimes frightening challenges, the internet has enormous potential for educators, businesses and organizations. Video games are among the most addictive of the new technologies, but as Digital Nation points out, they are also being used in some innovative ways, including outside-the-box classrooms, virtual boardrooms and even therapeutic applications for the U.S. military. Having seen just a snippet of how video games might be used in the classroom, it's difficult to make a judgment call, but I certainly think they have potential for teaching certain hands-on skills or reaching unconventional learners.

In fact, the very idea of conventional learning is being called into question in this new digital age. As several educators and technology experts point out in the films, young people simply cannot be expected to absorb information the way they did 20 or 30 years ago, through lectures, long readings and rote memorization. While some people may find this reality difficult to accept, they should also consider the parallel reality that young people growing up today are preparing for an entirely different world than young people of a few decades ago, one that will require a very different skill set from their predecessors. In assessing new digital tools such as google tools, educators must consider that reality. Digital Nation offers an example of one struggling school that has transformed itself by embracing new technologies. I strongly believe that, particularly in schools fraught with poor test scores and serious discipline problems, experimentation with new technologies is a worthy investment -- as long as it's done thoughtfully and with an eye toward meeting the students where they are and preparing them for the future.

One benefit of embracing new technology is that we as parents and educators can have a better sense of what our kids are up to online. As several parents attested in Growing Up Online and Digital Nation, they truly had no idea what their kids were doing while they sat in front of their computer screens for hours on end. Just as preparing people to be good citizens and well-rounded individuals in the real world takes a multi-facted approach, teaching kids how to be safe and responsible online should be everyone's concern. Parents, who wield the greatest influence and bear the greatest responsibility for their children's welfare, ought to be the first line of defense. Now that the internet is commonly used in schools and for homework, educators should also take responsibility for teaching internet safety. The government can probably have minimal influence on general internet use without overstepping its boundaries but ought to have a robust program for dealing with internet crime such as child predators.

Of course, not all internet dangers are easy to define and monitor. Arguably one of the most detrimental aspects of the interenet is its many tantalizing tools for over-exposure. Young people -- and many adults -- don't always understand the irretrievable nature of a picture a video or an emotional outpouring posted online. Nor can they necessarily comprehend the damage they can do to their reputation and image simply by hitting "send" or "post." These decisions can come back to haunt them when they apply to colleges or jobs. Though it's difficult to teach young people where to draw the line when it comes to sharing information online, adults should nevertheless be vigilant about the dangers of letting their children loose in the new digital frontier.

Instead of combatting the everyday problems inherent to the internet, many parents fixate on the over-reported and relatively rare danger of internet predators. As Growing Up Online points out, most kids today are savvy to predator habits and not looking for trouble of that sort online. In my opinion, parents should be much more concerned about other interent dangers. Along with overexposure, the internet offers young people the ability to stay connected to their peers at all times -- a reality that can sometimes have devastating consquences, as one couple shares in Growing Up Online. Unable to escape the taunts of his schoolmates in the privacy of his home, their son turned to online suicide forums, where he learned methods for killing himself and gained encouragement from like-minded individuals. The combination of cyberbullying and the availability of these suicide sites caused him to ultimately commit suicide. Other very real dangers outlined in the two films include technology addiction and a growing inability to focus on difficult tasks.

One danger that was scarcely touched on in the pair of films was the real-life experiences young people may be missing out on by spending so much time online. While social networking does not preclude real friendships, the sheer amount of time kids spend online surely interferes with their ability to do simple things like take a walk with a friend, make something by hand, help out around the house or learn a new skill. Online habits also contribute to a sedentary lifestyle and the host of health problems that go with it.

I found the two films immensely informative and potentially useful in my future career as an ESOL educator. Growing Up Online gave me important insight into the way kids think, learn and interact today, and Digital Nation defined the new realities of teaching these digital natives. I was particularly bothered by the assertions, made in both films, that young people read very few books anymore after a certain age and that many educators no longer expect it. While I firmly believe in adapting and changing and trying new things as an educator, I do believe there's a place for old-fashioned tools and methods. We lose something very important as a society if we no longer read and honor great works of literature. Along the same vein, I think it would behoove educators at all levels to insist upon a few projects each year that require patience and sustained thinking. These would not necessarily need to be accomplished absent of digital tools, but they should be well-thought-out projects that nurture young people's ability to think deeply and work slowly and carefully. On a personal level, I hope to apply the lessons of these films by challenging myself to keep up with any and all technologies my multi-cultural students are using and that might help them be better learners. But I also plan to resist that notion that young people can no longer sit, unplugged, with a book open in their laps and thrill to what they find inside.