There was a great episode of Frontline on the other night called “Growing Up Online”. It talked about members of a high scool class of 2007 and how the internet has affected their socialization, the media bombardment they have grown up with, the pitfalls of too much usage, parents reactions, and other related thoughts.

I could relate to a lot of it, since my age and hobbies and profession make me not so far apart from the teens being chronicled, but still probably 5-10 years younger than most of their parents. The technologies that the story focused on were the pop subsistence ones the internet has given us: camera phones, texting, Facebook and podcasting. I personally don’t care for any of them, because i find them all shallow compared to more meaty e-tools like digital photography, blogs, and forums. but the purpose they served in the day-to-day lives of the teens were no different from what they serve in my life – creativity, self-expression, friendship. And if i choose more sophisticated and specialized uses of the internet, its not in this case a sign of greater intelligence, but i think the self-confidence that comes with growing up and being a relatively happy and well-adjusted adult and knowing your own preferences. I would be texting and geeking out on MySpace if i was 18.

The story further got into the good and bad of living on the net, something again i could relate to by the time i’ve been sucked in on self-created project.   this past week most of my free time was spent learning some movie making studios and encoding programs so i could make a movie of our Fruita\Moab trip. Or how i compose posts and dwell on some of the things on MTBR for hours. Or how you can craft your persona and change your own self-image – play the part of yourself as Nietzsche said (and see how smart i make myself appear by quoting Nietzsche?).   The painfully-obvious conclusions were that anything is healthy in moderation, good people will make mostly good decisions, and everything on the internet is bullshit.

Genevieve has been walking in this e-space since she started wathcing Baby Einstein. Her TV addiction is painful, even more so because she simply is not hooked on it when she is around me alone – in the mornings she might once say “wanna wash ddd” and i quickly shut her down and then she happily plays with her trains or puts on shoes or destroys the goddamn house but at least she is thinking and running and playing with me. The other night, after she had been sitting in a chair staring at Cartoon Network for 2 hrs while Beckie and I cooked and worked, she threw a tantrum and tossed remotes about the room and bit me when I changed the channel to, ironically enough, Frontline.

I understand the allure; i’ve spent whole nights working on getting a flaming logo or a spinning logo to look just right on my website.

I think a few hrs a day is ok, and we’ve been lately letting her watch the TV in the kitchen while we are at least in the same room. And there is no denying how much she has gotten out of Dora and the other decent programming we feed her. I like how creative and aware she is as a result of all the media. She loves looking at pictures, and sitting on my lap while i work the computer, and lately has gotten hooked on trying to take her own photos – its cool, its not like it wastes film, i just dont want her dropping the camera!

its ok in moderation. but Beckie and I have both at times found ourselve lost in the e-world, and i see it happening to G regularly. We cant be the blind parents on Frontline – it wasn’t that their daughter   was posting Goth porn of herself on MySpace, its that she had no real life to the point where she spent all this time inventing Goth porn. Beckie and i have to get the fucking needle out of her arm.