On August 6, 1991, a newborn is released from the hospital. Simultaneously, the World Wide Web is released to the public. Since then, the child and the internet have grown and developed side-by-side, increasingly interdependent, increasingly intertwined. The child, now a teenager, lives in two realms: his first home, the physical world, and his second, the internet. In the minds of the teenager and the rest of his generation, the worlds have begun converging. Rapidly, adolescents are losing a sense of the natural world and its workings as they immerse themselves in their online experiences. When internet etiquette crosses into the real world, its traditional order is disrupted and altered while individuals, especially adolescents, the most influential group of internet users, are dehumanized.
Flashing advertisements, hundreds, thousands, millions of results from a search engine, constantly updated blogs and websites, new e-mails by the minute - the refresh button. In cyberspace users experience informational overload first hand, but where is the never-ending supply of information and pop-up notifications back in the real world? When the river of updates is dammed, teenagers may begin acting more impulsively, creating drama and sometimes even life-threatening situations to fill the void. The rise in impulsive behavior in teenagers relates to the link between the increased aggressive behavior, thoughts, and actions and decreased prosocial behavior for those who play violent videogames , many of which are also internet based and socially oriented, like World of Warcraft. Just as having the ability to crash cars or shoot people in a game causes violent feelings that carry over into the every-day lives of gamers, having the ability to shift dramatically from website to website causes teenagers to generate dramatic situations in real life. On Facebook and Myspace, friends are deleted with a click of the mouse. It’s no wonder that characters in popular movies, shows, and books among teens, such as Mean Girls and Gossip Girls, create such insular cliques; they know that ditching former friends is as easy – as easy as a click of the mouse. The open, lawless nature of internet videogames and communication allows users to kill, de-friend, to be mean, to gossip – all without the direct consequences they would meet if such acts were preformed in the physical world.
In that physical world, connection and communication is multi-faceted, a complex mixture of words, tone, and body language. The subtle aspects of face-to-face communication are stripped away on the computer. Instead, users find themselves face-to-screen, hiding behind cold glass monitors. Many even use the barrier to mask truths, creating pseudo identities and deceiving others. How else would a sweaty, overweight, middle-aged man lure a fourteen-year-old girl into meeting up with him? Others, especially those with poor social skills or those afraid of confrontation find safety behind the screen as well; finally, they feel comfortable speaking to others, voicing their opinions. But they may soon become too comfortable. Increasing reliance on the internet as a main form of communication hinders the ability of adolescents to understand the emotions of others, and even obstructs them from certain emotions. Sure, you can have an engaging conversation or exchange loving words in an e-mail or instant message, but the where is the true sense of human intimacy and connection, physical or otherwise? Where is the friendly punch on the arm, the warm hug, the soft kiss, the shared bout of laughter, rising up and dancing in the infinitely blue sky? These are things that cannot be shared through copper wires, fiber-optic cables, or wireless connections, things that are worth more than the 3 points you receive for cracking a dog’s neck or the10 points you receive for each murder committed in Call of Duty 5. In the Japanese animation Serial Experiments Lain, a teenage girl commits suicide, but shortly afterward, her classmates begin receiving messages from her on their phones and computers. “I haven’t really died,” she wrote. “I’ve just freed myself from the physical world.” But perhaps we must remember to appreciate our first world, a world of love and companionship, before we immerse ourselves completely in the colorless abyss of cyberspace.
Teenagers are learning to adapt to a new era, commonly referred to as the information age. With this shift, however, another respectable epoch is coming to an end, which is disheartening to older generations. Far before computers were even invented, Albert Einstein that “technological change is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.” Well, that axe has been swung. We cannot expect the world to remain unaffected by the impact of the internet’s evolution. The teenage population is not entirely at fault, as they are simply acculturating to the new technological age, taking advantage of the greatest innovation of their lifetime. While change is perhaps the only constant in life, it is important for us to maintain what makes us human, or else the history of mankind and its nature will be forgotten, regarded as invaluable compared to the present, modern world, where machine replaces man. We must learn to control technology; technology must not learn to control us.
