The Internet - Ruining Young People?

[anonymous-user]

Back in my day when I were a teenage lad (late 70's) problems were sorted face to face, with friends or family, using your nouse!! You dealt with stuff and it built character.

Now it appears when you have a problem you simply post it on here and see what 10,000 total strangers have to say on the subject.

It can't be healthy, can it?

The upside, of course, is a very public lesson on spelling, punctuation etc.

[okgo]

I agree,

I am not very productive any more thanks to the internet

[TankRizzo]

I don't know about the Internet, but email has definitely replaced face-to-face contact in a large part of the workplace. People sat one office over from me would rather email me than have a five-minute conversation.

Of course, this may be because I smell.

[Justayellowbadge]

I have seen many young people ruined on the internet.

It's what it's for, primarily.

[Gylen]

garyhun said:

Back in my day when I were a teenage lad (late 70's) problems were sorted face to face, with friends or family, using your nouse!! You dealt with stuff and it built character.

Now it appears when you have a problem you simply post it on here and see what 10,000 total strangers have to say on the subject.

It can't be healthy, can it?

The upside, of course, is a very public lesson on spelling, punctuation etc.

I misunderstood you there initially - I thought this was another advice thread looking for the best way to 'ruin' young children but I'm with you now...

I agree actually. I read an article in The Herald recently about how educational establishments are incredibly worried about the fact that students researching a topic are losing the ability to differentiate between established sources of information with citations, references etc. and have baked, 'man in the pub' type opinion and they placed the blame squarely at the door of Google/wikipedia et al.

The fact that you can usually come up with 5 or 6 supposedly official web pages to support even the wildest theories suggests that some measure of checks and balances should be required - at least if something has been published by an academic publishing house, one tends to find that it has been pretty rigorously researched!

[Eric Mc]

No - they've been ruined already.

[HundredthIdiot]

Justayellowbadge said:

I have seen many young people ruined on the internet.

It's what it's for, primarily.

[Rofly Lollers]

garyhun said:

The upside, of course, is a very public lesson on spelling, punctuation etc.

It's "When I was a teenage lad..."

I recently had my oddball/communication difficulties/no social skills cousin to stay. He might have said five words on a good day (no kidding) but he could bugger off to the computer and converse with people in America on Bebo.

[Fidgits]

HundredthIdiot said:

Justayellowbadge said:

I have seen many young people ruined on the internet.

It's what it's for, primarily.

and another


For what its worth - I think its an interesting point, is it just society changing, or is it really ruining social interactions/research etc..

Having recently watched the movie wall.e I did wonder if we are going to become a race of people that interact soley through computers rather than face to face..

[anonymous-user]

Rofly Lollers said:

It's "When I was a teenage lad..."

Yes, yes I know. It was done with a Yorkshire accent in my head

[sprinter885]

I think we're, sadly, stuck with the effect t'internet has on today's "yoof".
It's not just the common use of the net for school research that's the problem (and that also includes the 'lazy' way of writing a thesis/essay or whatever, by simply cutting & pasting)

It's the lack of real social interaction face to face & the true "get out & explore the world for yourself" experiences that are being lost. Most teenagers seem to live their lives via Facebook/MySpace/MSN etc etc instead of experiencing meeting people for real. I think this impacts on their ability to judge people as to who is genuine etc. Not to mention that it risks raising a whole generation of kids lacking varied sporting ability . (Oh hang on- isn't Britain a bit lacking there already??)

Having sadly observed my 17 yr old son I think it also impacts on relationships in the home but also is responsible (together with the texting syndrome) for poor written/oral language skills & "bdisation" of English language.

Sorry to rant -I've obviously got strong views.

[john_p]

Justayellowbadge said:

I have seen many young people ruined on the internet.

It's what it's for, primarily.

superb

[chris_w666]

Justayellowbadge said:

I have seen many young people ruined on the internet.

It's what it's for, primarily.

Possibly the biggest laugh I have ever managed from reading a thread.

[r1ch]

The internets ruined a lot of stuff. People are more likely to cheat on their wives/husbands due to the amount of social networking, and kids dont go out as much.

[Gretchen]

chris_w666 said:

Justayellowbadge said:

I have seen many young people ruined on the internet.

It's what it's for, primarily.

Possibly the biggest laugh I have ever managed from reading a thread.

That's made me smile.

[renrut]

The internet is just a giant human conciousness thingy. Has the very best and very worst of humanity in it. Most of what you want to know and a lot of things you really didnt want to know. So it's both good and bad, like a lot of other things really.

Besides it needs to improve their punctuation, grammar and spelling - the current education system clearly doesn't do a good job.

[LukeBird]

Justayellowbadge said:

I have seen many young people ruined on the internet.

It's what it's for, primarily.

ETA Gary, yes completely agree. The amount of people my brothers age (15) who seem to spend their entire lives arsing about on the 'net is frankly appalling. My parents were late in the uptake for a PC and much less the internet. (Didn't have BB until about 3years ago).
Hasn't done me any harm. I think!

Edited by LukeBird on Wednesday 6th August 12:51