Robert Brown-A New Wild West?

After viewing "Growing Up Online", a Frontline documentary, I was seriously provoked by the many issues concerning internet activity and its use in our learning institutions. One of the most emphasized concerns was the issue on CONTROL and the lack of it being exhibited through our teenage culture and the institutions responsible for guiding them into a successful transition from adolescence to adulthood. Other issues such as addiction, morality, socialization, and parental control came into play, thanks to the manner in which this documentary was deliberately constructed. Rather than focus on more of the positive attributes of the internet, and its use, the creators of this documentary chose to capitalize on the negative, especially regarding social networking sites such as My Space, and Facebook. Thank God, for the breif reference to a girl who chooses to use these sites in a creative and constructive manner, otherwise I think I would of bailed out of completing the viewing of this documentary. As I was watching this documentary, I started to internalize the information to the days when I was growing up and in the process three things started to flow through my mind; two were songs that were popular in depicting social attitudes at the time and one was a movie called "Reefer Madness" of which I felt correlates to this depicted "Internet Madness" that was being displayed. The two song titles were "And the Beat Goes On" by Sony and Cher and the other song was "Everyday People" by Sly and the Family Stone. I think that these songs would definitely sum up the social attitudes of todays youth in respect to their use of the internet and the theme of "rebellion" which has always been prevalent in every generation coming through our universe. Sometimes I wonder, if we should just "pull the plug", turn out the lights, and just fade back into the wilderness from whence this all began, just so that we could have more time to think about CONTROL!!