Reina's Thoughts on the Internet

Over this past Passover Holiday I was able to spend some quality time reading. I came across an old issue of New York Magazine entitled "PORN and Junior-High Culture, the vanishing male libido, and the google of smut plus: Emily Nussbaum on 'Skins' and NC-17 TV." Although I was at first struck by the provocative cover article, the segment on Junior-High culture in this February 7, 2011 issue was very informative.

Time and time again we are hearing about the impact technology and, in particular, the Internet is having on our youth. I have already witnessed how it has affected my generation, no one really talks on the phone anymore people prefer the impersonal nature of texting, relationships are developed on g-chat rather than in person, and the boundary between what is personal and public has been completely blurred by social networking. As an educator who works with K-12 and, part of the Y generation, I am sandwiched in between two realms. I remember, appreciate, and grew up in the times of old, as well as value, understand, and utilize the technologies of new. I am also in direct contact with today’s youth.

Am I expected as a young teacher to help navigate students through this “newish” frontier for them?

Alex Morris, in his article “They Know What Boys Want,” focuses on young teen relationships. He discusses that this generation of kids’ “sexual maturation is inextricably bound up with technology.” They are exposed to more, they have access to more, and they live behind a screen. Morris mentions a teen who ignores her “boyfriend” in public, where they act like they are just friends, but have extremely intimate online conversations. It is as if this generation of youths can only communicate online.

So what is the big deal?

Teens also realize that it is not only easier to communicate online but is also easier to conceal the truth. Words of commitment and devotion can be written and copied to many “girl/boyfriends.” Actual emotions, whether good or bad, are only expressed through emoticons rather than visual confirmations and/or confrontations.

There is so much lost and gained by exposing our children to the Internet, so how do we keep up?


Over this past Passover I had the great opportunity of spending time with my cousins in Israel. They are all Israeli and range from 14 to 2 years of age. Technology exists in each one of their lives in different ways. I had the great pleasure of watching the Disney Channel with my 7-year old cousin. We were watching an episode from the TV series “The Suite Life of Zack & Cody.” In that particular episode characters of the show take part in a virtual online community where their self made avatars roam. One character describes it as an online world featuring their better selves. My cousin who was reading the Hebrew subtitles exclaimed that he wanted to join such a community. He immediately went to the Internet to search for it. After a few minutes, he came back to ask me if I could search for the program in English as he was not sure how to spell it. I was all of a sudden searching for “virtual world” and trying to navigate through the hundreds of hits. At some point I stopped and sat my cousin down next to me. I explained to him that what was taking me so much time was that I was trying to find a child appropriate world. He asked me why? I tried to explain to him that just as adults and children visit different places in the real world so too in the virtual world. Fortunately for me, he accepted this explanation. The last thing I needed was for his parents to find out that I gave their 7-year old access to a virtual stripper club or worse. I kept on thinking what would happen if he ended up on the wrong site and interacted with the wrong avatars. Isn’t the nightly news full of these horror stories? At the same time a lot of the kid sites had animal avatars, not realistic looking ones. I finally decided to look up the actual TV episode, I found out that Disney made up the program used on the show that was similar to but not identical to second city, which does not exist for children. After another search, I found something and we began to navigate the program together. Within half an hour my cousin lost interest.

This experience made me think about how I, as an adult, want children to navigate the web. More than anything I have learned that I cannot control what they view, but hopefully I can inform them how to search for appropriate material. 

Recently, I came across an article that uses “Second Life to Enhance Classroom Management Practice in Teacher Education.”