Growing Up Online

Frontline: Growing up Online looks into the lives of teenagers of today's generation. In this day in age, teenagers face some sort of screen for most of their day, causing them to be over exposed to media and entertainment. This can be a problem when it is time to grasp their attention in real life away from life online such as in school or at family gatherings. Teachers have to become some what of entertainers in order to keep their students minds from wondering. The internet is a teenagers way of self expression and a place they can escape their over barring parents. Most parents who grew up with out the internet believe it to be a dangerous place for predators to find and stalk their children, but in reality the dangers of growing up online are much more self destructive.
Teenagers who have grown up online know how to avoid predators. They are mostly using the internet to socialize with people from their school and when a random screen name messages them, asking them where they live they know it is not right and will not respond. However the kids today are faced with much deeper problems such as growing up to fast and self esteem issues. Take Autumn Edows for example. This was a girl who did not fit in in real life and felt like an outcast. However at age 14 she posted provocative pictures of herself on the internet and created a mass cult fallowing which boosted herself esteem dramatically. She admits that she became addicted to the internet just as so many teens admit today, and when her parents made her delete her life online she was devastated. The internet is also a perfect place to get support and inspiration for eating disorders as another girl admits that she uses the internet for “thinsperation” a popular Google search which leads to many articles and blogs about supporting eating disorders which give tips and tricks on how to purge and binge eat. The film also talks about websites which are designed to help kids learn the perfect way to kill