Ever since we were born, we have always been connected to the Internet.  I can’t even remember a time when I didn’t know what a computer was or what the Internet was.  However, whenever there is something good, people always try to find faults with it. People will always be cautious about something that they aren’t accustomed to. Many adults are worried about what their kids are doing online. The world that they grew up in is completely different from the one that we have grown up in.  We have grown up in a world where socializing and having fun have usually involved a screen of some sort but most of the older generations are used to socializing and having fun by going outside and talking to people face to face.  It’s not that we don’t do that too.  We just spend more time talking online than face to face.  And there is a very simple and basic reason for this.  This reason is that it is much easier to communicate online than having a face-to-face conversation.  These days you can have however many conversations you want at the same time.  This makes communicating and getting a point across much quicker.  For example you can probably invite hundred people to a party or special event, in a matter of seconds, whereas it would have probably taken you at least a day to do the same twenty years ago.  This new way of communicating has led to many adults claiming that this generation is lazy and anti-social.  In my opinion, that is completely the opposite of what we really are.  Our generation probably communicates with more people and more often than any other generation before us.  As for us being lazy, why would you want to do something that takes longer and is harder when you can do it quicker and more efficiently?  For example some people complain that kids can’t do math without a calculator.  Why would we want to do long division when we can get the answer in a second or less?  I don’t believe that we are being lazy.  I believe that we just found a way to do things quicker and more efficiently. 

The Internet has become the second part of what defines us.  In my opinion, someone’s personality is defined by where they are from and what they do online.  The sites that we go on help us find who we are and define our personality.  The Internet also helps show our personality and what makes us different.  Social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace allow people to display who they are.  In the present world, our personality is probably mostly defined by the music we listen to, which directly affects the way we dress, which in a way affects who we are.  However, most people don’t get their music from stores or hear it on TV or the radio.  They get it online from sites like YouTube and IMEEM.  More and more people are finally starting to get away from mainstream music and their best source for music has become the Internet.  The Internet is also a great source for exposure.  Many artists found Internet success, which in turn led to their success in the music industry.

The Internet has not only become a great way for people to find their identity and who they are but has also become a second voice or even a first voice for millions of people around the world.  For example people in Iran are blogging more than ever.  The reason for this is because this is the only way they can say what they want.  The Internet has given people the freedom that they desire in many countries and since there are no restrictions over it, people are free to say whatever they want.  Getting rid of unwanted media like newspapers, television broadcasts, radio broadcasts, and posters are much easier than getting rid of online media like blogs.  For this reason, even countries where freedom is limited, people can still talk about their views on politics, the government, society and anything else that is on their minds.  However, a few people have gotten into quite a bit of trouble because of their online voice and opinions.  Two people of Chinese background in Singapore were put in jail for anti-Muslim remarks that were made on their blog.  An Egyptian blogger named Kareem Amer was sentenced to four years in prison for making insulting remarks about the Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak in his blog.  Another Egyptian blogger named Abdel Monem Mahmoud was arrested for writing anti-government remarks in his blog.  Lastly, Jan Pronk who was a United Nations Representative for given three days before he would be deported for writing a personal article about the situation of the Sudanese armed forces. 

However, since we live in a free country where we have freedom of speech, it isn’t fair that adults are restricting and taking away their kids’ privileges.  Some adults have made their kids completely delete or get rid of their online accounts.  This is no different than taping their kids’ mouths and putting a muzzle over them.  Our generation tends to rely on the Internet to get points across.  There are many more people who protest online rather than on the streets or in buildings.  As a result, if you take away our voice online, you are taking away our voice entirely.  All that we’re left with is a whisper in the real world that nobody wants to pay attention to, especially the older generation.  The older generations tend to get a point across by actually talking or fighting.  Our generation fights our battles online because we are open to a much larger public.  This leads us back to our main point, which is when you take away our online privileges and rights, you are taking away our opinions and our voice.

After watching the documentary about growing up online, I must say that I didn’t really agree with most of the documentary.  I felt like they were blowing everything out of proportion by taking a few bad cases and making a whole documentary solely on that.  Not every kid has a whole new persona online that they don’t have in reality.  Most kids remain the same and are pretty consistent in the way that they act.  I, for example, don’t say anything online that I wouldn’t say in real life.  Many people do tend to be themselves on social networking sites like Facebook or on MSN.  However, I can see how people may change their identities online, when they are not on a social networking site.  On sites like YouTube where people are completely anonymous, people usually say whatever they want.  Most people just say crude things on sites like YouTube just for the simple fact that they can.  

 In my opinion, the only thing that social networking sites like Facebook may have changed in a person is that they may have given them more confidence and allowed them to be more outgoing than they would be in real life.  For example picture this situation.  A boy really likes this girl at school but is too afraid to talk to her.  He realizes this and decides to add her as a friend on a social networking site like Facebook.  He is more confident online, since he doesn’t have to worry about stuttering or being nervous, so he finally talks to her, online.  Situations like this happen all the time and have given our generation an opportunity to be more confident and social.  This extra confidence also sometimes translates to extra confidence in the real world.  On the other hand, there are a few people that take it much farther than that.  An example of a person with a drastic increase in confidence would be Autumn Eddows from Growing Up Online.  The reason why Autumn Eddows gained a great amount of confidence was probably because she couldn’t be herself in the town that she was in.  As I recall, Autumn Eddows was originally from a small town where she wasn’t accepted for who she was.  As a result she went online and found a group of people that she could familiarize herself with.  This soon became a fan base and Autumn Eddows was her true identity.  However, when her parents shut her site down it was like a part of her had just died.  The one place where she could be herself was taken away from her.  All her friends, her identity, her safe haven, were all gone, along with her confidence.  She then began withdrawing herself and became anti-social and somewhat of a loner.  Although, in her defense there was no one that she could talk to or connect with.  She was a Goth from a town where everybody else wasn’t.  However, soon her parents allowed her to go back online and it was like was she was reborn.  She was able to connect with other people like her and had her real identity back.   

Now, let’s step away from the documentary for a little bit and focus on the people who actually use the Internet, which is the younger generation.  Kids aren’t as stupid as many of the adults believe we are.  Many of them are probably more knowledgeable on the current issues that affect our world than many adults.  Many kids know what they are doing online.  They are not just walking in the dark with no light when they are online.  Kids know not to give out any personal information to someone that they don’t know.  Many parents may be worried that their kids might be giving out too much information like their phone numbers.  Yet, they don’t consider that big book of phone numbers called a phonebook that everybody has at home a threat.

The way that I see it is that people need answers to everything in life, especially in North America.  Nobody dies of old age anymore.  Everybody has to die from something.  People need answers to their problems. They need someone to blame for the new problems that exist in the world and the easiest thing to blame is something that did not exist in a world that they grew up in.  For example the girl who had an eating disorder in the documentary ‘Growing Up Online,” had the problem before she went online and the problem probably remained at a constant level before and while she was online.  It’s not like these problems didn’t exist before our time. However, we live in a time where everything is public, or at least the negative things are.  People who watched this documentary (especially the people who don’t know very much about the internet to begin with) now only know that the internet is good for cyberbullying and getting in contact with predators.  They don’t know about the millions of sites that help kids deal with their emotional and social problems like suicide and abuse.  At the end of all this talk about the documentary, all that I am saying is that “Growing Up Online” didn’t give an accurate view on the Internet, social networking sites and the kids who grew up with them.  The Internet helps kids to identify themselves and to express their opinions or thoughts more than it harms them.

The way that I see it is that people need answers to everything in life, especially in North America.  Nobody dies of old age anymore.  Everybody has to die from something.  People need answers to their problems. They need someone to blame for the new problems that exist in the world and the easiest thing to blame is something that did not exist in a world that they grew up in.  For example the girl who had an eating disorder had the problem before she went online and the problem probably remained at a constant level before and while she was online.  It’s not like these problems didn’t exist before our time. However, we live in a time where everything is public, or at least the negative things are.  People who watched this documentary (especially the people who don’t know very much about the internet to begin with) now only know that the internet is good for cyberbullying and getting in contact with predators.  They don’t know about the millions of sites that help kids deal with their emotional and social problems like suicide and abuse.  At the end of all this, all that I am saying is that “Growing Up Online” didn’t give an accurate view on the internet, social networking sites and the kids who grew up with them.