Response: Growing up online

I wonder where the line will be for future generations in regards to what intimate things they will allow the general public to see?  Living almost my entire adolescence with instant messenger, the internet and blogs at my discretion, I could relate to a lot of the student's accounts of it being essential to their social existence.  When you are scrambling to be accepted, find some semblance of yourself and survive the everyday droll of being a teenager, the internet is a place where you can instantly find connections.  The level of discretion that many of the students seem to lack in their filtering of what they post or say on the internet is really hard to grasp.  

It also seems like many of them understand the possible repercussions of these illicit images, videos, etc. and choose to post them anyway.  I wonder if in the future it will be the norm for people to have this type of thing floating around in caches and it would not hinder employment or anything of the sort in their lives.  Instead of running around trying to stop or monitoring the students maybe parents and schools should set up their own sites to help mediate things.  There could be websites or forums used to unite students, connect them, help them organize things and work out problems while at school.  This may allow a student who is being bullied to maybe use their own form of communication to reach out for help to their school community or counselor's office.   

Jenna