Hello Team!
I’m stepping outside my comfort zone a bit today. Normally I’m doing more behind the scenes work for Fostering Resilient Learners and today I thought I would stretch my writing legs and share some things that have been rattling around in my brain. My mom, Kristin, and I spend a lot of time talking about her work and bouncing ideas off each other. One topic that has often come up is the impact of the internet on education, and development as a whole. In talking with my mom, I realized that there are a small amount of us in the world that had a very unique perspective about “growing up” with the internet.
As many of us know, the World Wide Web became available to the public in spring of 1993. According to NPR, “By the end of 1995, more than 24 million people in the U.S. and Canada alone spent an average of 5 hours per week on the internet (1).” In my lived experience, and the experience of my peers, those of us that were born between the years of 1995-2005 had a very interesting experience in our interactions with internet access. We didn’t just grow up having it, we grew up right alongside it. As we developed, so did the internet. By the time we were 5-10 years old, most of our households had computers, and the early days of the internet were much different than they are now. While there were some parental control programs like Net Nanny in the early days of the internet, many of these controls were fairly limited in the content they could block. We also know that younger generations tend to be a bit more tech savvy. This lack of internet control led to some lasting impacts.
My relationship with the internet started out as a cautious one. I had family members who worked in juvenile detention centers, mental health, and one who worked directly with the Center for Missing and Exploited Children. I was taught about the potential dangers of the internet very young, and I was highly encouraged to be careful online. Even though I took this advice to heart and was very careful in my online activity, I was still exposed to content that was not developmentally appropriate (or in some cases never appropriate) far too young. Sites my friends and I thought were “safe” still had explicit or inappropriate content hidden within them. There was so much in the online space that our parents never knew existed, not because they didn’t care or they didn’t keep an eye on us, but because they were also learning how to navigate new technology and dealing with sneaky teenagers at the same time.
An experience that stuck with me was one with a website called ask.fm. This was a website that allowed users to anonymously submit questions to an individual and then that individual’s response would be publicly posted. So, Sally could ask Melissa a question and Melissa would not be able to see who sent her the question but could post her answer publicly. For teenagers with significant concerns and questions, this became an opportunity for them to get support anonymously. Sadly, with no controls, this website quickly turned into a prime outlet for cyberbullying. There were no protections against what you could submit to a user. Instead of advice and support, users would receive anonymous hateful messages and become targets of bullying where the perpetrator’s identity was never revealed. Eventually, the fallout became too big, and the website ended up removing the anonymity feature and adding names to questions, which ultimately led to most users deleting their profiles. However, as ask.fm declined in popularity, new formats of social media rose, and thus creating a cycle of different “uncontrolled” internet outlets that each had their own major flaws. This cycle continues to this day.
All of these anecdotes lead me to my point that those of us born within that ten-year span got to experience a fairly unique internet. While there is still a lot to look out for online, as we got older, internet safety became a higher priority. Parental controls got better, sites started cracking down on policies regarding content, and overall, it became at least a bit harder to accidentally stumble upon content you shouldn’t be seeing. That being said, we have a long way to go in terms of the realm of internet safety. There will likely always be individuals and companies who put profit over harm reduction and will allow unsuitable content on public media outlets. There are also the very tech savvy individuals who find ways to sneak into sites, place content and manipulate others into “not ok” even dangerous situations. With that in mind, it is on us to educate the next generation on how to maintain safety on the internet.
The exposure I and others who “grew up” alongside the internet experienced had some lasting negative effects. I won’t deny that there are many benefits to technology that have advanced our learning, made things easier and have served as a source of support to many individuals who may not have otherwise sought help. However, I sometimes feel as though my generation was the beginning of the end of being allowed to be a “true” teenager. With the astronomical rise of social media and influencer culture, kids are being encouraged to act like adults far too young. Ten-year-olds who were once excited to get a barbie for their birthday are staring to ask for $60 Stanley cups and iPhones. Eighteen- year-old influencers with their own multi-million-dollar mansions and brand deals with designers are a common phenomenon. Imagination and playing are seen as “childish” to people that are still children themselves! And I don’t write this to sound curmudgeonly with the stereotypical “kids these days” comments. I say this as someone who understands the importance of enjoying being a kid before you inevitably have to become an adult.
Now you may be wondering how this word dump of my opinions and experiences relates back to the work Kristin does. Myself and others who “grew up” with the internet in this decade are starting to enter the workforce, many of us into the world of education. I am writing this as a challenge. Those of you working with young children and pre-teens, I challenge you to encourage and foster the joy of being a kid. So many of our youth have been exposed to so much negativity and trauma (through the internet or real life). You, as a professional who gets to interact with them almost every day, have a chance to bring in some of that joy of being young. We can challenge them to limit their screen time and engage in creative play and activity. We can model for them responsible use of technology and we can educate them on the potential unhelpful, unhealthy and unsafe things that exist on the internet. Encourage imagination and creativity through things like play and projects and activities. Kids have most of their lives to live as grown ups, with the help of educators like you, we can challenge our kids to hold on to the joy of being a child.
~Katlynn Souers
(1) https://www.npr.org/2023/04/30/1172276538/world-wide-web-internet-anniversary#:~:text=Embedded-,The%20World%20Wide%20Web%20became%20available%20to%20the%20broader%20public,with%20graphics%2C%20audio%20and%20hyperlinks.
