Growing Up Online

Today’s children are growing up in a new and different environment than those in generations past. They are constantly using technology to make new contacts and access new material. It must be very hard for parents because they did not grow up with these opportunities.

From personal experience, I know that many adults are not very “tech-savvy”. For example, my mom did not know how to check her email and relied on her children to help her access it until my brother went to Africa and email was the only way to keep in contact with him. Similarly, my father still does not know (or care) how to check text messages on his phone. Neither of my parents knows how to use their cell phones (except for making calls) nor do they really know how to navigate the Internet.

On the other hand, it seems to me that my two younger siblings are technology obsessed. My sister always has her cell phone with her. I have noticed she texts people every few minutes (and sometimes seconds) of the day. Now that she has an iPhone she can do just about anything and look up whatever she wants and no one will be the wiser. My younger brother appears to be constantly on the Internet from the time he gets home from school to the time he goes to bed. He reads stories, researches information for school and video games, and probably does a lot more than that.

I feel that I am in the middle of these two generations. I have not grown up with a computer since birth like my younger siblings but know more about using computers (because they became popular later on in my childhood) than my parents, who did not experience computers until their adulthood. I know how to navigate the Internet and certain technologies to a certain extent but I do not feel like an expert nor do I think the Internet sucks up my life like it seems to do with those from the technology generation. I do have a Facebook account and a couple of email addresses but I do not feel that I am fully apart of this new technology-centered generation.

The disparity of knowledge between the technology generation and previous generations needs to be addressed and solutions need to be determined and implemented so that adults can better understand the world that their children live in. Currently, adults are not aware of many of their children’s activities on the Internet. As the teen in the video said, children from this generation know how to “out-smart” their parents when they attempt to keep tabs on what their children are accessing on the Internet. We have all heard stories about young children meeting predators on the Internet. If adults do not take the time to learn more about how to operate the technology their children are so familiar with, they will never bridge the gap and understand what their children are up to or what it like to grow up in this generation. They will also be helpless to protect their children from the dangers of the Internet because they may not even know they exist or they are not very familiar with them. Adults need to accept that the environment their children are growing up in is different from the environment they grew up in and accommodate this change by learning about technology.