Fifteen Minutes of Online Fame

FIFTEEN MINUTES OF FAME ONLINE
[SOURCE: Common Sense Media]
[Commentary] What are your kids learning from Virginia Tech gunman Seung-Hui Cho, DJ Don Imus, and actor Alec Baldwin? Are their 15 minutes of online fame giving children an unwanted message? A fundamental of child development involves mirroring: Kids look to parents, teachers, and friends to get a sense of who they are and how they impact the world. But increasingly, kids find mirrors in online communities -- the MySpaces, the YouTubes, the Facebooks. Through written, pictorial, and video postings, kids send messages out to the world about who they think they are. Then they get reactions back. And the more reactions they get, the more popular they feel. Just consider what a point of pride it is for kids to have hundreds of "friends" on MySpace. But these public forums reward the sensational. The more outrageous a posting, the more responses a kid will get. Kids depend on these responses to confirm their popularity, value, and sense of identity -- and somehow, consequences aren't really factored in. The fame itself trumps the fallout. Because our kids look for feedback and measure it in the quantitative ways unique to the online user-generated world, they may be taking away the message that, consequences aside, doing something outrageous makes you an instant celebrity.
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