Frontline’s “Growing Up Online”: What about the digital dossier?

From Corinna di Gennaro and Miriam Simun of the Digital Natives Project...

PBS recently aired “Growing Up Online” (and posted the entire episode on their website) - an inquisitive look into the lives of so-called Digital Natives.  The program presented a world of young people spending much of their lives immersed in digital media - constantly connected to friends and others via mobile phones and web sites such as MySpace and YouTube. These are the lives of young people who are the first generation to grow up online, or those “born digital”, to borrow the term from John Palfrey’s and Urs Gasser’s forthcoming book of the same title.  Frontline addressed several of the key issues the Digital Natives project is investigating, including education in the age of internet, online identity play, cyber-bullying, and online sexual predators.

While the documentary hinted at the types of creative expression and activity taking place online, the focus was very much on the risks associated with socializing on the internet.  Discussion of young people’s private lives, which are increasingly taking place online, touched upon the shifting notions of privacy among youth raised with a mouse in-hand, and a number of the issues regarding the wide and unknown audience they present themselves to.  Hats off to Frontline for taking a fair - and realistic - stance in addressing the sexual predator issue...

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