[Sig-bwp] FYI: PBS Frontline | "Growing Up Online" | Jan 22 2008 | 9 PM ET |

[Gerry Mckiernan]

***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.

[ http://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 at iastate.edu 

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