 What does it mean to be human? › Is it our opposable thumbs? › Our ability to speak? › Natural need to be social? Is it possible that our human need to be social, will also cause the social demise of our society? Of our race?

 Members of Generation Y or Don Tapscott’s Net Generation have experienced the negative social effects of the internet more perhaps than any other generation thus far.  The internet progressed from a dial-up connection through telephone lines to high speed and high definition capabilities.

 Communication through the internet has lead members of society to become: › Depressed › Impersonal › Lazy › Impatient › Inability to focus › “Me Monster” Syndrome

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 So what’s the big deal, you ask?  The problem is not Facebook itself, but the interactive nature of the communication, as well as the context of the communication.  Because the communication occurs more through the internet, and not in person, kids are not learning how to communicate in the “real world”.  They’re not able to make and maintain eye contact.

 According to the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project:  31% of 12 year olds in 2006 in the US were actively using social networking sites  By mid-2009 this grew to 38% › More kids are taking advantage of social networking sites at younger ages.

 Kids are also lying about their ages in order to create an account.  As a result, kids are being exposed to content that they’re necessarily not ready to handle.

 So we know the sites that are popular with older teens and young adults, but what site’s target younger children?  -Club Penguin  -Kidzworld  -Webkinz  -Imbee

 Because these sites are targeting children at younger and younger ages, kids are growing up being constantly exposed to the internet.  Younger children, more so than teenagers, are exhibiting more of the negative effects of the internet, be they grow up with it, it’s all they know.

 Younger Children are exhibiting the following effects:  Laziness  Impatient  Inability to Focus

 According to the article, Web Sites for Young Children: Gateway to Online Social Networking?, time on the computer, on the internet "creates a hyper-fluid sense of identity".

o The idea that kids have become more egocentric. o By posting status updates through social networking sites, kids make their lives public to others on the internet, and essentially create opportunities to boast about themselves on these sites. o The comments that they receive from their friends act as fuel for their ego. o Where does this come from?

 impulsivity  inattentiveness  lack of verbal reasoning  lack of listening skills  lack of independent work skills  more needed scaffolding or guiding by the teacher  decline in work ethic and motivation  short attention span  teacher needing to break up the day more because the students can't focus for more than 10 min at a time  lack of critical thinking and creativity and imagination