

Teenagers and the Internet - hobolobo
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/sep/08/beeban-kidron-inreallife-interview-teenagers

======
3pt14159
I've had the internet for twenty years (since I was 8) and computer access
since I was 3. Most of my friends had access since they were 10 or 11. We
turned out fine. Some kids who have poor role models are going to ask for oral
sex from boys or girls that like them. This was true 3000 years ago. It is
true today. It will be true twenty years from now regardless of what silly
idea the person who made the documentary has. "Part regulation, part cultural
shift." Please. I'm not taking any more "think of the children" arguments for
laws.

Also, I'm sick and tired of "child porn" including 14-18 year olds. It isn't
child porn. They arn't children. They are teenagers. Some of them have been
having sex for years. It should be a different offence to posses and it should
not be an offence to posses if you were in a loving relationship (and similar
in age, a 14 year old and a 16 or 17 year old, not a 40 year old and a 14 year
old).

You know those dirty letters you got from your sweetheart when you were 17?
Sexting is the same damn thing.

~~~
nissimk
I'm very upset that this is the top comment on here. 14 year old teenagers are
definitely children and they do need to be protected by law from predators.
Just because they are old enough to have children of their own doesn't make
them adults. Is not OK for sites or individuals to be collecting sexual images
of children and distributing them.

Also, to all you folks on here saying that this is all fear mongering to take
away or rights, you're missing the larger point here which is that the recent
cultural shift with the prevalence of handheld computing has a lot of negative
side effects and we need to rethink the norms. It is very rude to sit at the
dinner table with people and be interacting with your mobile device rather
than your real life companions. It wouldn't have been OK for a parent to sit
at the dinner table having a phone call with colleagues back then and just
because mobile Internet makes it silent it's still not OK.

That is just one example in a long list of things related to mobile computing
that are considered OK but are actually rude or unhealthy.

~~~
dictum
> the recent cultural shift with the prevalence of handheld computing has a
> lot of negative side effects and we need to rethink the norms

One possible rethinking of the norms would be to worry less about teenagers,
letting them sext if that's their thing, and advising them to not let societal
abuse (e.g. bullying) get to them.

Scenario: a teenager sends a nude picture to a friend and the picture becomes
public.

Possible solutions:

1\. We keep teenagers from sexting, and people from seeing pictures that
teenagers sexted.

2\. We learn to not abuse teenagers who sexted and had their pictures leaked.

The latter is harder, but it's better long term. You can force people to not
do what might harm them somehow, but you should look at the fundamentals: _why
do people suffer consequences when they sext?_ Is it because of the sexting
itself, or the reaction people have to it?

> I'm very upset that this is the top comment on here. 14 year old teenagers
> are definitely children and they do need to be protected by law from
> predators. Just because they are old enough to have children of their own
> doesn't make them adults. Is not OK for sites or individuals to be
> collecting sexual images of children and distributing them.

Age is a spectrum. A better definition of, say, a 16 year old would be "not
quite an adult, not quite a child". They're closer to adulthood than to
childhood, but still don't have some of the baggage of adulthood. Talk to a 16
year old and you'll find out that they don't want that lack of baggage to keep
them from enjoying the benefits of being treated like adults. I doubt having a
line drawn that says you're not an adult until you're 18 years old, and until
then you're still a child will keep working in this century. It worked when
social dynamics between teenagers and adults were different.

~~~
IsThisObvious
> I doubt having a line drawn that says you're not an adult until you're 18
> years old, and until then you're still a child will keep working in this
> century. It worked when social dynamics between teenagers and adults were
> different.

I'm not sure it ever really "worked", and seems to be an idea that is less
than 100 years old. If it's failing already, I'm not sure we can count the
couple generations it happened to it "working".

------
msluyter
Given the absence of real data (as in, studies that demonstrate conclusively
that watching too much online porn has certain downsides), it's not surprising
that a lot of comments are resorting to anecdotal reasoning of the form:
"Well, I use the internet and _I 'm_ ok..."

Nonetheless, I think it's worth entertaining the hypothesis that in many ways
the internet is like candy for your brain, and constant exposure might have
subtle -- perhaps not yet fully recognized or appreciated -- effects on our
cognition. We're running a vast uncontrolled experiment, and when things go
wrong we (tech elites) tend to dismiss it with some variation of "Well, _they_
had mental health issues or a parental problems or they would have been
bullied anyway etc... etc... etc... It couldn't have been _the internet._ "

The problem is that these are the same sorts of arguments that have been
deployed in the face of every technological advance. "It's not that video
games are addictive, it's that people already prone to addiction choose to
become addicted to video games. 100 years ago they would have been addicted to
whist."

I find this to be rather unpersuasive, generally, but I'm honestly also at a
loss to articulate a compelling counterargument of my own. I have vague
misgivings and a handful of anecdotes and not a lot of sound science.

~~~
shortlived
Do we need real data to know that too much porn is a bad thing?

> The problem is that these are the same sorts of arguments > that have been
> deployed in the face of every technological > advance

I agree and at the risk of sounding like my parents, I think the internet is
different. Never before has their been a technology so all encompassing and so
powerful (and dangerous).

If I wanted to look at pictures of girls when I was a horny teen, I had the
bra section of the JC Penny catalog. The jump from that to the type of online
porn that exists today is pretty big. Add to the fact that online porn is so
much more accessible than visiting a porno shop, it's no wonder kids can fall
into it more easily.

~~~
existencebox
But lets turn back the clock a few thousand years, where pre-teen boys were
practically expected to engage not only in sexual acts/experiences, but often
with those FAR older than themselves. At the risk of more unsubstantiated
statements (qualifier, I spent 7 years studying latin+latin history), I feel
like the amount of sexual content exposed to children in that era was FAR
greater than now, even with the internet+porn, just in different media, and
handled in very different cultural and social light, with much less stigma.

There seems to be a lot of paranoia around this issue, but observe that there
have been HUGE ranges of how humanity has handled sexual content over the last
few thousand years around the globe, and generally "we've turned out ok." This
is a question that answering empirically will be VERY difficult, due to the
sheer complexity of the human development process and the number of
confounding variables, and I think a degree of faith needs to be had in the
resiliency of our species and social structure to adapt.

~~~
coryfklein
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here. That exposure to hardcore
porn online is okay because it's better than being raped as a child? Or it's
okay because we can adapt to its negative influence and come out alright?

What if I want something better than "ok" for my kids?

~~~
existencebox
Firstly, to say that the older/younger relationships from that era would be
generally considered rape even by todays standards would be quite a stretch.

Secondly, I must apologize in advance, I'm having a lot of trouble stating my
point, probably because I'm sitting in a cluster computing conference, and
will try to give this a better shot when I can devote more focus to it, but in
short: I think we have some very skewed ways of looking at sex and sexual act.
A stigmatization of the topic as a whole even makes it very hard to talk
about. There are examples of rape and "improper" behavior in sexually liberal,
and sexually conservative societies. There need to be new and less black and
white ways of looking at and judging both sexual maturity, "appropriate"
behaviors, and conduct. It is not productive to point the finger at a
prevelence or lack of sexual material and then yell "THINK OF THE CHILDREN",
this is going to be answered I think by a better understanding of human
behavior and cognitive function, and right now we're grasping in the dark for
useful metrics and basing decisions on questionable logic.

Anyway, I feel like I may be going away from the answer you wanted/rambling a
bit, so I'll cut this short and perhaps reread/reedit my response. I also want
to brainstorm a bit with my female, who as a psychologist/cognitive scientist,
works with the most extreme cases of sexual deviance/criminals, and in
positions of sexual assault support, and I'm sure has some relevant thoughts
on the issue.

------
nicholassmith
It's interesting, the Internet has become a micro-society and people are
beginning to have expectations that the major players have a responsibility to
perform a similar service as that of a government (contributing resources to
fight child porn as the example made), whilst also expecting governments to
rule it. Can we have it both ways? And should we expect that as a norm?

The internet doesn't have a morality, it's a tool and usage is defined clearly
by the user. The fact that more teenage boys are accessing pornography and
have warped approaches to conventional relationships is a problem, but how
much of a problem is it due to the internet? My generation (approaching 30)
were among the first to have always on, reasonably high speed internet and yes
that did mean easy access to pornography but despite that the majority of us
are in long term relationships.

I think there's a lot to be made of how the internet has impacted modern
society, but it doesn't exist in a single point of impact. There's also a
dozen other factors that have to be taken into account, ranging from parents
being less available due to increased workloads to an education system that's
not encouraging people to want to learn.

~~~
pitt1980
" My generation (approaching 30) were among the first to have always on,
reasonably high speed internet and yes that did mean easy access to
pornography but despite that the majority of us are in long term
relationships."

My impression is that this generation has historical low levels of involvement
in long term relationships and family formation

(not arguing that causality is internet porn ---> people don't get married,
but it's an interesting data point)

~~~
nicholassmith
Sure, marriage does seem to be down amongst the people I know in long term
relationships but that mostly seems to be (in my circle) down to apathy about
the concept, as they deem it pointless. "Who needs paper and a £10k party to
show your love?" sort of thing.

There's a big melting pot of changes in our society, and I do think the
internet has played a part as has changing opinions on religion, finance and
wealth and so on.

~~~
pitt1980
I don't have links on the tip of my fingers, but my impression is that family
formation among young people is down, and its not simply a matter of symantics

I'm not even a believer that that's necessarly a terrible thing

but I do think its a real trend, not just otherwise committed people deciding
that they don't need a piece of paper

I think internet == food is the right analogy, too much of certain types of
internet usage seems obviously not healthy for you, I think as a culture we
should make efforts to make sure that message is widely dessiminated

------
djent
I'm a teenager, and from my own experience, teenagers will do idiotic things
even without the Internet. Pointing the finger at the Internet for parents'
problems with their children is an easy thing to do because the Internet can't
defend itself, especially as a whole.

~~~
acallaghan
In the 60's the teenager label emerged. These were just kids that had found a
sense of community in sharing music, rebellion against the system, and unique
dress. There's nothing new here. Teenagers will be rebellious, as they always
have. If the older people in society find ways to prevent them from accessing
material they want to see, they'll just find another way.

Teenagers have their own tastes in what the internet provides, and that
interests/excites them, through social media, and other specific sites (like
ask.fm). Nothing around this is new. Saying we should protect the poor
teenagers is very demeaning to a group that are becoming adults, and
protecting them by censorship helps no one in our society.

~~~
Cthulhu_
And yet, before the 60's and before the rise of proper education, teenagers
went to work after elementary school (if that) and became mature, responsible
adults much sooner. At least, so I heard. They couldn't get together and have
orgies or whatever, because they were expected to be either at work, or back
at work at 6 AM.

[/faux history teacher]

~~~
superuser2
Work now requires more education. A PhD student is not less mature than a
bachelors student just because he's in school for more years. He doesn't lose
the right to make decisions for himself.

Prolonging the socially defined period of childhood didn't magically rewire
brain chemistry.

------
teeja
It's great that someone so attentive to teens is candidly exploring this
subject on film. Unfortunate that it seems to be focussed primarily on
negatives.

Yes I spend a lot of time on the net: unlike the TV which consumed thousands
of passive, scripted hours in my youth, the net is interactive, the outcome
within my control. For most of my life, the many things I couldn't learn more
about for lack of time or helpful resources were out of reach; the
amplification is awesome. For most of my life, I had to imagine being
connected with communities of shared interests, never imagining having the
focussing luxury of needing to choose from among them.

Those changes in my life are all positives. So while teens are doing teenish
things with this tech, they are learning - just as we adults are. And when
they become parents, they'll know from experience (just as in the middle ages
and in the 1800s and 1950s) the impact of these new things.

The social impact of emergent technologies has always been unpredictable.
Luckily humans adapt. And so far, ever since the first piece of flint changed
lives, we've muddled on somehow. Not that worry-warting is worthless;
reflection is in fact the mother of adaptation.

------
chrisdone
As usual mass media newspapers, or the shadow left thereof, are decades out of
touch with subject matter that has been covered in the blogosphere
extensively, making the same old observations (“warped perceptions of
women/sex/life/etc.”) that were made about television and games in past eras,
treating their audience like sheltered idiots. I don't know why anyone reads
this tripe or bothers to watch these ‘documentaries’.

------
scrrr
Apparently there's some proof that too much pornography is bad for you. [1]
Not too mention all the multitasking. Other than that the Internet is like
every other thing. It has good and bad sides. I, for one, have faith in
teenagers. They'll turn out alright. It's usually the old folks that make the
bigger/worse mistakes.

    
    
      [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSF82AwSDiU

~~~
Sagat
But it's the teenagers who turn into those old folks. So they don't turn out
alright.

------
navait
It's unfortunate that answers to internet pornography always come in the form
of these unworkable filters. Politicians can only justify censoring
pornography as "Parent's don't want their kids to see it!", rather than
acknowledge it as a public health problem.

After seeing some of my friends fall prey to porn addiction, I think the sheer
amount of porn on the internet is a problem. When porn was something you had
to go get on your own, you were limited to a small selection. However, now new
and harder materials are avalible instantly, and it creates a feedback loop
where people can't have sex without it.

Really, a better answer would be to discuss pornography addiction as part of
the sexual education curriculum, but too many people would consider it
"teaching children porn".

~~~
unimpressive
>a better answer would be to discuss pornography addiction as part of the
sexual education curriculum, but too many people would consider it "teaching
children porn".

Sort of like how DARE teaches children drugs?

~~~
67726e
About that....

> the program was sometimes counterproductive in some populations, with those
> who graduated from D.A.R.E. later having higher than average rates of drug
> use

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_Abuse_Resistance_Education...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_Abuse_Resistance_Education#2001_-_Surgeon_General_categorizes_D.A.R.E._.22Ineffective_Primary_Prevention_Programs.22)

~~~
unimpressive
Normally the phrasing I used indicates satire. In my case I was entirely
serious. (That is, I'm well aware that DARE does in fact seem to teach drugs.)

------
dtf
Both The Guardian and The Daily Mail, who enjoy huge web audiences, and who
campaign passionately for freedom of the press, also campaign incessantly
against freedom of expression on the internet, giving our politicians the wide
political grip they need to clamp down on technology. It's ironic how much
these two papers can be alike sometimes.

------
isolated
Those men who retain their privacy by abdicating social media pay an
impossible price. The gradual fade of their relationships and social
livelihood. Only one who has spent so long starved by it's lack that their
ache has forgotten to bother them can hope to pay it. Thankfully current
business is email. But our peers are eager to change that.

Tales of young women giving themselves to multiple men is a common trope in
hysterical portrayals of social ills. If one would like an example of what
these tropes look like, 'Reefer Madness' is on netflix. This article almost
reads like a paid endorsement of david camerons internet filter. It is a
outrageous story about internet porn, men who dare anonymity, and youth
corrupting youth designed to generate panic in the minds of ordinary men.

I have no idea what the situation is in the UK, but I know I've never been
invited to any sex parties. Nor have I ever heard of such a thing happening in
my area. This might be because such sex parties don't exist, or because men
who obviously wouldn't participate aren't invited.

But then, who can argue with such wonderful anecdotes?

------
tomstuart
Ugh, “the girl who let herself be gang raped”? I expect much better than this
from the Guardian.

~~~
diydsp
Yeah, then you read the article and it says "molested."

I went back to verify this and couldn't find it (!). Until I searched for
"gang" instead... That's when I found The Guardian had changed the wording in
the last few hours! If you scroll down to the bottom you'll find this:

"The standfirst to this article was amended on 12 September 2013. It
originally referred to a girl who "let herself be gang-raped" to get her
BlackBerry back. The misrepresented the text of the piece, which says she
allowed herself to be sexually assaulted."

So, go ahead and blame technologists for allowing the internet to cater to our
more prurient interests, but the newspaperpeople seem to the ones directly
responsible.

------
jpswade
The Internet isn't the problem here, consumption is, just like TV wasn't the
problem 20 years ago, or computer games wasn't 10 years ago.

Let us not forget the 7 deadly sins: Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath,
Envy, Pride.

Teenagers simply aren't equipped to deal with these issues like adults are,
hell even some adults struggle.

~~~
mordae
It's not Pride, it's Vanity.

~~~
jpswade
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_deadly_sins#Pride](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_deadly_sins#Pride)

~~~
mordae
Pride can have positive connotations, vanity not.

~~~
jpswade
I'm aware of how words work.

------
zokier
Bit off-topic, but interesting that in this sentence:

> Kidron, who carries lightly the title Baroness for her pioneering work not
> just in making such films as the BBC's _Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit_ but
> in spreading the narrative wonder of great movies to schoolkids across the
> country through her FilmClub, says that many of her friends have said the
> same thing

where would you except the "Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit" link to lead?
Maybe another Guardian article about the film? Wikipedia? IMDB? Homepage of
the film? Trailer? I for one would not have excepted a credible paper like
Guardian link to a crappy and most likely illegimate rip of the film. That's
barely above linking directly to The PirateBay.

------
smackay
The only practical approach is to give teenagers the tools necessary to deal
with this and make sensible decisions based on their own values and respect
for others (as if being a teenager wasn't hard enough already). However, good
luck in getting PE (Porn Education) taught to ten-year olds, never mind being
able to filter out all the agendas of concerned parties and being able to
create the materials necessary with essentially nothing to base it on - in
terms of the effects it's having on teenagers development.

The ship of consequences sailed a long time ago on this one and it's not clear
where it's headed.

------
simias
I've always thought the problem was letting kids alone on the net. You
wouldn't let you kid alone in a shaddy neighborhood for hours without checking
up on them, would you? So why do exactly that with the internet?

I think the main problem with the web is that it makes you lose your right to
be forgotten. Think of those kids who post stupid videos of themselves on
youtube that go viral. It won't go away, people will be able to find that 10,
20 years from now in New York, Paris or Tokyo.

~~~
superuser2
Would it have been okay for your parents to wiretap your phone? No? Then why
is it okay to demand to read your children's private conversations?

I am terrified we're going to have a generation of kids who have no concept of
private. Who've never been allowed to speak or be curious about anything their
parents wouldn't approve of. Who are used to having to explain conversations
and reading to people who were never supposed to be part of them. Parental
Thought Police are orders of magnitude more terrifying than state Thought
Police.

Can you _imagine_ an adult who has never had a private experience as a child?
Maybe to a collectivist culture, that isn't so scary, but to me it's
dystopian.

~~~
simias
_My_ phone? I didn't have a cell phone while growing up, the only phone at
home was in the living room. So no wiretapping really needed...

And seriously, your parents aren't the NSA. Of course they should do what you
are doing and of course you will do what you can so that they don't find out.
It doesn't mean having a GPS tracker on you at all times.

I stand by my original point: the internet can be a very dangerous place
filled with strangers, it's irresponsible to let your kids browse it
unsupervised.

~~~
superuser2
Funny you mention GPS, because lots of parents do exactly that.
[https://wbillpay.verizonwireless.com/vzw/nos/safeguards/Safe...](https://wbillpay.verizonwireless.com/vzw/nos/safeguards/SafeguardProductDetails.action?productName=familylocator)

As far as the phone, I guess houses with one central telephone aren't really
what I'm talking about, so much as _Bye Bye Birdie_ "The Telephone Hour"-type
situations. Teenage girls in the 50s and 60s were able to talk about boys,
criticize authority figures, and generally be themselves and develop as their
own people using technology without supervision or censorship. You probably
didn't have that experience, but my parents did, and it would have been creepy
and invasive then for their parents to demand to be part of those
conversations, just like it's creepy and invasive now.

The NSA is (ostensibly) only looking for terrorist plots. Your parents are
looking for criticism, attitude, impure thoughts, differing political beliefs,
ingratitude, and a whole bunch of other things that are part of being a young
human being. There is no question in my mind that given the choice, I'd take
the NSA.

You know what else is a dangerous place filled with strangers? School.
Sidewalks. Libraries. Not just strangers, but dangerous ideas. College.
Especially college. At some point kids have to learn to navigate those things
independently, lest they self-destruct the moment the leash is removed. Not as
5-year-olds, sure, but definitely by 16/17 (depending on maturity, of course).

------
pjc50
Do bear in mind that there are effectively two alternatives:

\- uncontrolled internet access, where other people's kids have access to a
lot of awful stuff (not just porn but "shock" videos; goatse and worse)

\- State- or business- controlled internet access, where someone else gets to
control what you see, potentially eliminating access to inconvenient stories
like Snowden.

We could really do with a "third way", but it needs someone to imagine what it
could be, how it could work, and how it avoids the usual attempts to ruin it
for everyone.

------
throwaway43210
I am a teenager who was watching internet porn daily. I was forced to stop
during a 2 week long holiday in which I shared a room with my family and had
limited internet access.

I immediately started noticing girls more and being more outgoing in life. I
know this is anecdotal evidence, but I can't help but feel like it is
unnatural to masturbate so often.

I think those chemicals in our body help us function and relate during crucial
years and that such easy access to internet pornography is upsetting some
balance.

------
cbhl
If I live outside of the UK, what's the right way to go about seeing "In Real
Life" legally? There appears to have been a showing at the Toronto
International Film Festival on Monday, but apart from that there appears to be
nothing.

------
zwieback
Or maybe the reality is a lot less interesting: a tiny percentage of teens
will go off the rails, a tiny percentage will benefit hugely and the vast
majority will do stupid things and reach adulthood more or less unscathed.

------
peterwwillis
The Internet is not to blame.

 _" One of the motivators for me making the film was that a friend of my
daughter came round to talk to me about a boy she had her eye on and he said
she could be his girlfriend if she gave him a blowjob."_

How can any rational person believe this is different from 40 years ago? You
don't think teenage guys were asking for blowjobs in the 70s?!

The sexual pseudo-revolution changed our society's norms forever, well before
the internet, and modern ADULT culture keeps them alive in ways that affect
young people. Really, adults should be looking at themselves as the reason for
why kids act the way they do.

But what adult would possibly blame themselves for what they can blame on the
internet?

 _" Most of the responsibility has to lie, however, she thinks, with the
corporations."_

And telephone companies should be held accountable if someone calls you bad
words on the phone. Look, there is a certain amount of personal responsibility
that parents and our society as a whole have to take on, because no amount of
litigiousness will stop people from behaving badly. Social change requires
_social change_.

