Brent Staples

Brent Staples wrote an essay about “What Adolescents miss when we let them grow up in Cyberspace.” In the beginning Staples describes the father of his 10th grade heartthrob. He insinuates that he is a fearsome steelworker who struck terror in the hearts of 15-year old boys. Whenever they would talk on the phone, her father would cut the conversation short. Now he has to make a choice to give up or show up at the front door. This is the first sustained encounter with an adult outside of his family who needed to be convinced of his worth as a person. he realizes that this is all apart of growing up. Staples says that if he was faced with the same challenge today, that he would pass on meeting her father and outflank him on the Internet. The
Internet provides real-time conversations through e-mail, chat rooms and instant messages. Therefore he wouldn’t have to come face to face with her father, than they could communicate anytime. I too believe that adolescents have at last succeeded in shielding their social lives from adult scrutiny. I agree that there is a cost to pay. Teenagers who spend too much time on the World Wide Web are missing out on socializing and experiencing the real-world that prepares them for adulthood. In the end he points out how adolescents can easily slip in a new and false identity at anytime. I think that is the danger of being on the internet. Being able to hide oneself or pretend to be someone else. This leads to teenagers doing things that they not old enough to do.