Are we letting our children grow up?

Growing Up Online is a Frontline documentary produced by Rachel Dretzin and John Maggio. It is about how our youth are using the internet more than ever and how it is a main part of life for most of them. Being a parent of a teenage boy, this was rather disturbing for me to watch. If wasn’t the fact that the internet is a danger and that kids are always connected to it somehow, it was more because the way that the parents were handling the situations.

We all know that kids are able to become whoever they want to be online. We know that there are predators looking for our kids. We know that there is fighting and bullying going on online. We cannot be on our children all the time and we cannot take away their privacy, especially at the high school age. This is unfair to our children! Teaching them how to be responsible and letting them know how what they post can become public information is a much better solution than demanding passwords and watching their every move.

Evan Skinner says, “My fear isn't that I have bad kids, my fear is that my good kids will make a bad decision, one bad judgment, and pay for it permanently. If it's on the Net, it's open to anyone. There are no safeguards. Someone can always find everything.” I agree with the good kids doing bad things, what I don’t see happening is this mother having a relationship with her kids and teaching them how to make good choices. My son does not always make the best choices but how else is he going to learn? I have taught him enough to know that if he is in a bad situation, leave. He also knows that he can come to me about anything and he will not get into trouble. Punishing our kids does not teach them why they should not do the things they do, it only teaches them that we said they can’t. Evan goes on to say,”.. I think adolescence is just the most difficult time for kids to be kids and parents to be parents.” This is the best time for me as a parent. I love seeing how my son has grown and how he can make good decisions and admit when he is wrong. It breaks my heart for parents to think that the teen years are supposed to be difficult and that we will all just get through it.

I know that this documentary is about kids growing up with the internet being an important part of their lives, but I just don’t see how the internet is to blame. There are all kinds of dangerous things going on in the real word, we just need to be responsible parents and educate our kids of the dangers in life.

There are sexual predators online, most of the time they are really obvious to our kids. My son knows not to talk to anyone who he doesn’t know and he also knows to block any adults that try to add him as a friend. Again, if we are in tune with our kids and we trust them, they are more likely to talk to us about problems. I feel for the family of the boy who took his life, but I have to ask myself, why did the father not pry a little more about who was bullying and how bad was it? Maybe going to the school and talking to a counselor about what kids they noticed being around his son. I know that my son’s counselor always knows who he is hanging out with and if something odd is going on. It just seemed as though the father dismissed it and then blamed the internet for what happened to his son.

I say this again; just get to know your kids. They are at the age where they are learning to become adults. If they don’t get the chance to make mistakes, how will they ever know how to handle being an adult? My relationship with my son is the most valuable thing to me. I put myself in his shoes before I make any harsh judgments about his life.