***APOLOGIES FOR RECEIPT OF DUPLICATE POSTINGS***
Colleagues/
FRONTLINE INVESTIGATES THE RISKS, REALITIES AND
MISCONCEPTIONS OF TEEN
LIFE ON THE INTERNET
/Gerry
FRONTLINE presents
GROWING UP ONLINE
Tuesday, January 22, 2008, at 9 P.M. ET on PBS
Jessica Hunter was a shy and awkward girl who struggled to
make friends
at school. Then, at age 14, she reinvented herself online as
*Autumn
Edows,* an alternative goth artist and model who posted
provocative
photos of herself on the Web, and fast developed a cult
following. *I
just became this whole different person,* Jessica tells
FRONTLINE.
*I didn*t feel like myself, but I liked the fact that I
didn*t
feel like myself. I felt like someone completely different.
I felt like
I was famous.*
News of Jessica*s growing fame as Autumn Edows reached her
parents
only by accident. *I got a phone call, and the principal
says one of
the parents had seen disturbing photographs and material of
Jessica,*
her father tells FRONTLINE. *They were considered to be
pornographic.
... I had no idea what she was doing on the Internet. That
was a big
surprise.*
Airing Tuesday, January 22, 2008, at 9 P.M. ET on PBS (check
local
listings), FRONTLINE takes viewers inside the private worlds
that kids
are creating online, raising important questions about just
how
radically the Internet is transforming the experience of
childhood.
*It*s just this huge shift in which the Internet and the
digital
world was something that belonged to adults, and now it*s
something
that really is the province of teenagers, * says C.J.
Pascoe, a Ph.D.
scholar with the University of California, Berkeley*s
Digital Youth
Project. *They*re able to have a private space, even while
they*re
still at home. They*re able to communicate with their
friends and have
an entire social life outside of the purview of their
parents without
actually having to leave the house.*
[snip]
At school, teachers are trying to figure out how to reach a
generation
that no longer reads books or newspapers. *We can*t possibly
expect
the learner of today to be engrossed by someone who speaks
in a monotone
voice with a piece of chalk in their hand,* one school
principal says.
*We almost have to be entertainers,* a longtime history
teacher
tells FRONTLINE. *If you look at the advertising world and
the media
world that they live in, they consume so much media. We have
to cut
through that cloud of information around them, cut through
that media
and capture their attention.*
Fear of online predators has led teachers and parents to
also focus
heavily on keeping kids safe online. But many children think
these fears
are misplaced. *My parents don*t understand that I*ve spent
pretty
much since second grade online,* one ninth-grader says. *I
know what
to avoid. * [snip]
[snip]
In recent years, *cyberbullying* has also become a problem,
as the
taunts, insults and rumors once left at the schoolyard now
find their
way online, where they can hound a kid 24 hours a day. John
Halligan*s
son was cyberbullied for months-first at school, then
online-before he
ultimately hanged himself just weeks into the start of
eighth grade.
[snip]
*You have a generation faced with a society with
fundamentally
different properties thanks to the Internet,* says Danah
Boyd, a
fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at
Harvard Law
School. *We can turn our backs and say, *This is bad,* or,
*We
don*t want a world like this.* It*s not going away. So
instead of
saying that this is terrible, instead of saying, *Stop
MySpace; stop
Facebook; stop the Internet,* it*s a question for us of how
we teach
ourselves and our children to live in a society where these
properties
are fundamentally a way of life. This is public life
today.*
[snip]
Promotional photography can be downloaded from the PBS
pressroom.
[ h
ttp://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kidsonline/ ]
***Mark Your Calendar To Remind Yourself to Watch***
/Gerry
Gerry McKiernan
Associate Professor
Science and Technology Librarian
Iowa State University Library
Ames IA 50011
gerrymck iastate.edu
There is Nothing More Powerful Than An Idea Whose Time Has
Come
Victor Hugo
[ h
ttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09093368136660604490 ]
Iowa: Where the Tall Corn Flows and the (North)West Wind
Blows ...
[ http://al
ternativeenergyblogs.blogspot.com/ ]
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