What Adolescents Miss When We Let Them Grow Up In Cyberspace

            Thanks to e-mail, online chat rooms and instant messages- which permit private, real-time conversations- adolescents  have at last succeeded in shielding their social lives from adult security. Now instead of that good old fashion phone call worrying about an adult answering the phone, walking to the person's house and having to talk to the person's parent who opens the door, the adolescent can by-pass all of that and talk to whoever it is they want to talk to though the World Wide Web. But in doing so, they are isolating themselves from real-world interactions. They can shop online, browse the web, play games over the internet, chat and so on- so why go out with our friends to do those things? Its not necessary anymore.

         
           "Mr. Lewis illustrated a point with Marcus Arnold, who, as a 15-year-old, adopted a pseudonym and posed as a 25-year-old legal expert for an Internet information service. Marcus did not feel guilty, and wasn't deterred, but when real-world lawyers discovered his secret and accused him of being a fraud, he simply responded that he found all of the books boring, leaving us to conclude he had learned all he knows from the internet and watching his family's bis screen TV."
                                                                                            -Brent Staples                 "What Adolescents Miss When We Let Them Grow Up in Cyberspace"

            I do agree with Staples that if we allow adolescents to grow up on the internet that they will not develop the social skills that they need to be successful when they reach adulthood but, I also believe that the use of social media to communicate with distant friends and relatives is needed.