I was interested to see this Frontline Documentary for a second time after seeing it on PBS a few months ago. One of the most troubling things I can see in the future from this phenomenon of "Growing Up Online" is a profound dependence and addiction to the online realm. People of my age, around 20, grew up in an area where we still relied on dial-up and the internet came to us slowly. This brings me to remember when it took 6 hours to download a music video, and then see if it was in a viewing format (Quicktime, Realplayer, etc.) that was compatible. The internet was slow instead of being as instantaneous as it is now. If kids are exposed to this from such a young age with high-speed internet, I think that their attentions spans and serious attention to academic pursuits really will drop.
My mother, who is a teacher, used the same language as the similarly aged teacher in the documentary, who said that she "felt like a dinosaur" because of the advancement in technology. She feels that entertaining students with electronic devices like smartboards cannot replace deep engaging teaching and learning, and ultiamtely acts in some cases to just make teaching more superficial. I must agree in some respects, although as people get more dependent on technology, this may be the only way that they can relate to the material, although I am not sure it is good to further encourage technological dependency and addiction in the serious realm of an academic classroom.
This seems to be the other trend: that people don't really care because they will gladly sacrifice other activities to be online. I even find this happening to me at times. Hopefully the internet does run out of bandwidth so we don't get too close to this wonderful but very addicting media.
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