The Hindu : International : To the next level on the Net

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Dec 08, 2004

International

International

To the next level on the Net

By Martha Irvine

CHICAGO, DEC. 7. Even in sleep, Scott Kearnan is hooked onto the Internet. He just turns down the volume on his computer, so that he is not awakened by the "brrring" of a late-night instant message. "It's become something for me that's almost like a telephone. I may not use it, but it could ring anytime," says the 22-year-old, who works for a search-engine marketing company. "If I don't have it, I feel cut off."

For 21-year-old William Herbert, the Internet has replaced newspapers and TV weather reports. He pays bills online, registers for classes, books airline and train tickets, checks TV listings, buys movie tickets and gets travel directions. "My parents, when we would go on road trips, would get a booklet with travel directions that were printed and mailed. Can you imagine? Mailing away for travel directions?" asks Mr. Herbert, studying business and highway design in Massachusetts.

The advances

It is a small indication of how far the Internet has come — and how its existence is taken for granted by a generation of young people who "have not known life without it," says Malcolm Bird, the head of America Online's services for kids and teens. Young people are now the savviest of the tech-savvy, as likely to demand a speedy broadband connection as to download music onto an iPod, or upload digital photos to their Web logs. The Internet has shaped the way they work, relax and even date. It has created a different notion of community for them and new avenues for expression that are, at best, liberating and fun — but that also can become a forum for pettiness and, occasionally, criminal exploitation.

Plugged in

More than any previous generation, today's young people are plugged in with a world of communication and information at their fingertips. Take Suhas Sridharan, whose introduction to the Web came as a sixth-grader in South Carolina. In those days, she regularly visited the Disney website to play games; by high school, she was researching assignments online and checking her e-mail daily.

"Now I think even my `senior self' in high school would be surprised how much I use the Internet," says Ms. Sridharan, a 17-year-old freshman at Emory University in Atlanta, where the Web is woven into the framework of students' lives via a system called LearnLink. Assignments are dispersed online. Students are much more likely to do research online than use the library. And even the proverbial class handout has gone the way of the Web, posted on electronic bulletin boards for downloading after class. So when Emory's computer server went down for a few hours one evening earlier this year, you would have thought the world had come to an end. "A lot of people were at loose ends," Ms. Sridharan says. "They couldn't do their homework."

The dark side

There is a dark side to this: It gives identity thieves and sexual predators a new place to look for victims.

Perhaps more common than those well-publicised dangers are the everyday dramas caused by online rumour-spreading. And it can get ugly, particularly when people post comments on their online profiles and Web logs, commonly known as blogs. Online rumours and innuendo cause angst among teens, too. "Parents say, `We never knew it would take on this velocity and ferocity,"' says Amanda Lenhart, another Pew researcher.

But the Internet has produced many unexpected benefits. The Web provides an anonymous outlet to troubled young people who want to talk about everything from suicide and self-mutilation to eating disorders. — AP

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

International

News Update

Stories in this Section

Terrorism will be rooted out: Karzai

2-year jail for former Minister in Sri Lanka

An octopus surprise

`China backs German bid for U.N. seat'

To the next level on the Net

Soldiers sue army

Americans get a cover deal

Al-Qaeda claims Jeddah attack

Sexism in U.K. Parliament

Philippines bans logging

SAARC not being held hostage: India

Fishermen held

Back home