Internet safety

Our last unit stressed Internet safety, or lack thereof, and shortly afterward, I stumbled on this video. It's an extremely dated Internet safety video, the kind that was clearly used as an educational tool in schools to encourage kids to be smart in their digital pursuits. I understand the sentiment, of course, and think it's valuable, but I find it rather silly that we've always had a tenuous relationship with technology in this respect. Digital literacy is almost obligatory in this day and age for success, regardless of the field one endeavors to go into, yet there is always a sinister edge to it, the potential for a mustachioed older man to entrap a child, or for any unsuspecting user to be confronted with a barrage of unwelcome images. This class has forced me to reflect on the ways that not only is technology constructed, so fraught with contradiction, but also, how that lends itself to the way my parent's generation has become skeptical of safety in the modern world. There's this resounding message in all my classes, it would seem, that the postmodern era has engendered a longing for a simpler time, and politics of that ilk have become more prevalent as well. The voices of young people, who have never known a life outside of this fragmented, digitized world are all but lost, and this silly video, which encompasses many things I would be very surprised to hear a child say, is indicative of that.