The Revolution

Facebook, MySpace or Twitter, these online virtual societies where the Internet consumers are taking part of, seem to be highly addicting and maybe unpredictable. Ninety percent of the youth living in the US are, according to the authors of Frontline, growing up online. Gaining and publishing information on the Internet turned out into sharing a second cyber-life. It is a media-revolution, which causes friction along the two generations; the parents and the children. It’s a new tool and a new weapon, the Internet!

 Though the youth is constantly and unconsciously being encouraged to form their own world online through media and by the their curious thoughts, cutting through the consumed media is nearly impossible for parents and teachers trying to control children’s education. While parents are concerned of the stalkers or ‘predators on the internet’ the teachers simultaneously worry the way students use the Internet to write an essay or to read a summarised book, which is according to some teachers called ‘cheating’.

This aspect of the Internet, however, is, in comparison with cyber-bullying, said to be of no importance concerning children who gave up their lives partially due to an acceleration and amplification of the hurt and pain these kids undergo by the bullying on Internet. Though the kids’ emotions are merely amplified Internet seems to take a role in the suicides of several Internet consumers.

The amplification of emotions which children often get from school can not only lead to suicidal acts but also to, for example, anorexia. Whatever hurt people feel in real life can be expressed or amplificated due to the connections and subjective information on the Internet.

Simultaneously children embrace interactive My Space and Facebook as if it is there everlasting second life, trying to get an improved and more successful cyber-life compared to their ‘real’ life at the ‘boring’ school or at home.  Children even use the Internet as dispel to forget or fill their leisure time. If your friends are on the Internet what else can you do when you want to stay connected to you friends than go on the Internet too. Trying to compete with your friends by playing games on the streets, such as soccer on the plaza in front of your home, has nowadays turned into cyber-gaming on the computer.

The parents, however, still do not see the Internet as a privilege that their children got in this century. It’s merely a world in which children are exposed to all kinds of information and people from which some parents get the ‘chills’ if they even think about it. It’s an open and private less contact place without any boundaries concerning social, political and economical issues.   

The Internet that is first of all a threat to several worried parents, which in several circumstances seem to be logic or predictable, the younger generation growing up online seem to treat the Internet as if it is their best friend which could every now and than provide them even more friends whenever they want and on every place.

We can state that the generation gap has become huge due to the Internet. It’s a new tool and a new weapon, the Internet!