Is the Internet Creating a Dystopia for Children?
By Mindy Lamothe, Lou Taris and George Guay
Merriam Webster defines dystopia as being an imaginary place where people lead to dehumanized and often fearful lives. Askoxford.com defines dystopia as an imaginary place or society in which everything is bad. As you can see, a dystopia is a place to be avoided, but with the click of a button, our kids step into dystopia every day when they log on to the internet.
With social networks such as Myspace.com and Facebook.com, endless chat rooms, texting and Internet access, our kids are communicating in more ways than we would have ever imagined. While most technological advances have propelled society forward, some have spawned serious, scary, and unintended consequences involving disease, rape and suicide. It is these consequences that have led us to believe the Internet creates a dystopia.
Childhood Obesity:
Given that children and adolescents have fully embraced video games, computers and the Internet, it follows that cases of childhood and adolescent obesity are rising at an alarming rate. Many children do not get the proper amount of exercise because they are sitting for too many hours in front of an LCD screen. Some of the diseases obesity leads to, such as diabetes, stroke and heart disease, are one of the reasons why sitting in front of the computer screen, leading a sedentary lifestyle, can be considered dystopic.
One cause for childhood obesity is a lifestyle that excludes proper physical activity. Many children choose going home from school and logging onto their computer over going outside and engaging in some sort of physical activity with their friends. For many children, it is just “the norm” to go home and engage with their friends using cyberspace instead of in person. Not all children are athletic and not all children enjoy sports, but even walking through the mall with friends can burn more calories than sitting in front of a computer for hours at a time.
According to James Farrow, MD, professor of pediatrics and medicine and director of the student health service at Tulane University in New Orleans, “It's a sedentary way of socializing instead of playing a sport or something like that, and I would not be surprised if they were eating at the same time they were on the Internet." (Elliott, 2008) He also states that, "The Internet is the new watching television for this particular generation of adolescents and young adults." (Elliott, 2008)
Would a parent knowingly let their child develop Type 2 diabetes or high blood pressure? Of course not. By turning a blind eye to childhood obesity, parents are setting their children up for a lifetime of medical issues. Overweight children are at higher risk of developing Type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, high blood pressure, asthma and other respiratory problems, sleep disorders, liver disease, early puberty or menarche, eating disorders and skin infections. (Mayo Clinic, 2008)
The social and emotional issues of being overweight are also great. Children can develop low self-esteem, behavior and learning problems, and depression. They also are ripe to become targets for bullies.
Cyberbulling:
While advances in communications technology have increased, opportunities for students to communicate have broadened; sadly, schools have identified an unanticipated social cost. Megan Meier, at 13, ended up enduring on-line harassment partly from peers. More significantly, she was deceived by an adult who pretended to be a teenage male romantically interested in her. (Price, 2008) That this kind of assaultive behavior drove Megan to suicide suggests that improvements in telecommunications can lead to a darker, less pleasant future.
Cyberbulling can involve the use of the Internet, instant messaging or cell phone, to harass the recipient. This can take the form of text, video, audio or any combination of those.
While increased awareness of bullying has lead schools to devise plans and training to cope with bullying, cyberbulling’s reliance on electronic harassment presents new issues for schools. One study indicated that up to 15% of seventh grade students surveyed had experienced this and over half knew of someone who had experienced this. A majority of victims were female. (Li, 2005) Anecdotal evidence exists that cyber bullying has lead to the suicides of some of the victims.
One response may involve talking to students in class on-line, as that would broach the topic in the medium where the harassment occurred. (Long, 2008). Exercises like those available at www.netsmartz.org can enhance student empathy, so that a student who thought that posting a “hot or not” list was funny could come to appreciate how all might not agree. (Long, 2008)
Strategies like those offered from a WiredSafety .org Teenangel (a trained volunteer who visits schools to teach about safety on the Internet) include not engaging the harasser, blocking future contact, and telling others about it. (Hays, 2008)
Some end up enlisting friends to magnify the harassment, simply by not having them object to the technological assault. (Hays, 2008) Having others challenge the cyber bullying may help to alter a victim’s perception that “everyone” believes that what’s said in the bullying is true. (Long, 2008). Finally, some have focused on behavioral standards for students, to reinforce when students engage in appropriate conduct and problem-solving action in any social context. (Long, 2008). And even outside schools, the creation of public service announcements on television explain the nature of and suggests ways to cope with cyber bullying. (Hays, 2008)
Online Predators
Sexual predators are not a new phenomenon, but with the dawn of the Internet, came a tool shrouded in anonymity and access to millions of teens. Using chat rooms, instant messaging, e-mail, or discussion boards, predators establish a relationship with their victims, many of whom are using these formats as a place to work out their troubles. They listen to and sympathize with kids' problems. They also try to ease young people's inhibitions by gradually introducing sexual content into their conversations or by showing them sexually explicit material. (Microsoft, 2007)
Recently a great deal of attention has been paid sexual predators using social networking sites such as Facebook.com and MySpace .com for their activity. A study in Pediatrics, the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics found that “in the last year, 15 percent of all the kids surveyed reported an "unwanted sexual solicitation online." However, “less than a third of these solicitations came through social networking sites.” In fact, most communication was done through instant messaging and chat rooms. (Ybarra, 2008)
Another recent study has shown that “The publicity about online 'predators' who prey on naïve children using trickery and violence is largely inaccurate. Internet sex crimes involving adults and juveniles more often fit a model of statutory rape- adult offenders who meet, develop relationships with, and openly seduce underage teenagers- than a model of forcible sexual assault or pedophilic child molesting.” (Wolak, 111) Most predators don’t hide. In fact, most predators are upfront about their ages and intentions. They are looking for girls who already engage in risky behavior.
In addition to the end result of rape, equally disturbing is the explicit nature of the communication between a predator and his target. . You can read the entire exchange at http://www.perverted-justice.com/index.php?archive=rn_buzzkiller2003. WARNING- IT IS EXPLICIT. it contains an internet chat between someone posing as a 13 year old girl, and the 21 year old man who is interested in her. As you can see, the man is honest about his age and what he wants
So what is a parent to do about internet predators? Know what kind of personality internet predators are looking for. Young people who are most vulnerable to online predators tend to be:
Also, use parental control software that will effectively spy on and record what your child is doing on the internet. (Google “chat logging software” and you’ll get nearly 400,000 hits.) Finally, talk to your children about internet dangers, keep the computer in a common room in the house so you can monitor what they are doing. There are thousands of websites out there that work to protect young children.
Conclusion:
Issues such as disease, suicide and rape are adult issues, ones that children should not be exposed to under any circumstances. Suicide. Rape. Disease. We cannot lose sight of the fact that children have access to this dysfunction at the simple click of the mouse, by logging on the Internet. Childhood obesity, cyberbullying and Internet predators are realities in today’s life, and parents must be fully aware and fully educated on how to deal with them. It is also vital that parents and society work together to stop this kind of dystopia before these problems become worse for future generations.
References:
Elliott, V.S. (2008), Life Style Issues Contribute to Weight Gain in Teen Girls. Retrieved July 28, 2008 from: http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2008/07/28/hlsb0728.htm
Hayes, S. (2008). Cyberbullies R 4 Real. Current Health 2, 34; 16-19, retrieved July 29, 2008 from http://libsys.uah.edu:3206/ehost/detail?vid=1&hid=109&sid= 2760ec3a -4dbc-43f5-85dd-c0d84e96a9f6%40sessionmgr108&bdata= JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ %3d%3d#db=f5h&AN=31824804
Li, Q. (2005). Cyberbullying in schools: Nature and Extent of Canadian Adolescents’ Experience. Annual Conference of AERA, 1-11. Retrieved July 29, 2008 from http://libsys.uah.edu:3206/ehost/detail?vid=1&hid=117&sid=cfb49c69-9a85-4861-b007- 5bb6463ecf7b %40sessionmgr103&bdata= JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ %3d%3d#db=eric&AN=ED490641
Long, C. (2008). Silencing Cyberbulliers. NEA Today, 26, 28-29. Retrieved July 29, 2008 from http://libsys.uah.edu:3206/ehost/detail?vid=1&hid=120&sid=e2417261- 8f2c -4108-94bf-cfde4d72ca7a%40sessionmgr102&bdata= JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ %3d%3d#db=tfh&AN=31976826
Mayo Clinic Staff (March 2008). Childhood Obesity- Complications. Retrieved August 6, 2008 from http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/childhood-obesity/DS00698/DSECTION=complications
Microsoft (Jan. 2007). Online predators: Help minimize the risk. Retrieved July 29, 2008 from http://www.microsoft.com/protect/family/guidelines/predators.mspx
Perverted-Justice (July 2008). Being born on Friday the 13th Should Have Made Him More Careful..... Retrieved July 29, 2008 from http://www.perverted-justice.com/index.php?archive=rn_buzzkiller2003 .
Price, R. (2008). How Cyber-bullies Drove my Daughter to Commit Suicide. The Daily Mail. Retrieved July 31, 2008 from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1027554/How-cyber-bullies-drove-daughter-commit-suicide.html
Ybarra, M., and Mitchell, K.J. (March 2008). (February 2008). How Risky Are Social Networking Sites? A Comparison of Places Online Where Youth Sexual Solicitation and Harassment Occurs. Retrieved July 29, 2008 from http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/121/2/e350
Wolak, J., Finkelhor, D., Mitchell, K.J., and Ybarra, M. (March 2008). Online “Predators” and Their Victims: Myths, Realities, and Implications for Prevention and Treatment. Retrieved July 29, 2008 from http://www.apa.org/journals/releases/amp632111.pdf .