Babies Having Babies- New Media and the Disappearance of Childhood

*Before reading this blog post, please watch this video clip*

In this blog, I will relate our class discussion on television and the internet's effect on childhood to the above segment of daytime tv show "Maury" and an article from the New York Times magazine entitled "The Loss of Childhood" by Marie Winn.

Back in the Golden Age of childhood, when it was invented or discovered in the 18th and 19th centuries, "Children, at least until they reached the 'terrible teens,' were seen as innocent, playful, childlike creatures in need of special protection, and parents were fiercely determined to keep childhood... carefree" but today "In their everyday demeanor, the language they use, the things they know and above all in their relations with the adult world, children have changed". (Marie Winn) There are many reasons for this change, such as the way that parent-child relationships have evolved since then, with the popularization of divorce and thus single-parents, "sex-drugs-and-rock'n'roll" from the 60's and 70's, and a new psychological paranoia of parents who believe their child-rearing is ruining their kids lives. But one thing is certain- the impact first of television and then of the internet has blurred the line between child and adult, of that which is kept secret until maturity and that which is exposed indiscriminately through new open media.

Marie Winn puts it best, saying "It was television that first penetrated the protective cocoon and thrust the long-hidden outside world into women's and children's lives. The new freedom and openness of the 1960's and 1970's allowed programs to grow more violent and sexually explicit - more adult, as they say. But soon parents made a troubling discovery: It was not easy to keep these programs out of the reach of their children; television was too hard to control. Parents consequently began to abandon some of their former protection of children - if only to prepare them to some degree for what they were bound to see on television anyway". Networks may have put some inappropriate shows on later, past the bedtime of the average kid, but what about daytime soap operas and ridiculously outlandish talkshows, like Maury (seen above)? Those are aired mid-day, while most kids are at school and housewives take a break from their mundane daily existence for some fantastical escapism to a sexier, juicier, more interesting life than their own. But what about kids not in school, or those too young to know what they're being exposed to while it no-doubt begins to familiarize them with things they just needn't know? And how about the poor single mother who can't afford day care so sits her children in front of the cheapest baby-sitter around, the television, for hours on end, while they simultaneously lose their imagination, curiousity and innocence due to the content and images they're watching?

Today, parents have basically given up, understanding that other than throwing out the tv and cutting off the web, they really have no control over what their kids are going to see, hear, and eventually say and do, whether in their own livingroom or out on the mean streets of the school yard. Now, in an attempt to control the chaos, Moms and Dads have taken on a completely uncensored role with their kids, answering any and all questions, putting the things they hear and see in the context of a reality they can't even begin to grasp. And that really is the difference; just because kids are more aware now than they ever were about the things that television and internet glorifies (sex, scandal, money, power, popularity, and idol-worship), it doesn't mean that they really fully understand them, that they have any clue about how those things actually relate to real life outside of the little box they stare at, and simply put, they're obsession with tv is part of the reason they aren't developmentally capable of comprehending them at all. Instead, they just act on what they see- as exhibited by the ridiculous, disgusting, wrecklessness of the 15 year old who wants have a baby so she can be like her uneducated pregnant-teen trash friends, and doesn't care what STD's she'll catch, or trouble she'll get into along the way. I wonder if her mother thought twice when at age 10, she bought her first tube of lip gloss, wanted shorter skirts or highlighted hair; if her mother paraded the men she saw around the appartment, having loud sex in the other room. Maybe she thinks having a kid will be easier than graduating high school and facing the real world, which she knows so little about. But one thing is sure, this 15 year-old desperate slut fancies herself a full-fledged adult. Why not? She's well-versed in the ways of sex. What else is there to it.

What's even scarier is the thought of her potential child. How will it be raised? With what values? Will it be exposed to it's mothers mishaps on "girls gone wild", encouraged to steal what it can't afford, told that the attention of men is more important than the affection of friends and family? But what is there to do? Maybe honesty is the best policy. Maybe television should start showing more shows on drug addicts, humanitarian crises, pollution, AIDS victims, random acts of violence, and just how scary the world is beyond the glitz and glam of sex and money. But then what would our kids be like? Paranoid, anxious agoraphobes afraid to set food outside in day-light or attempt human relationships. I wonder if that's the better option.

The Wikipedia Labyrinth- Online Reading and Linear Thinking

Our in class discussion on the internet's effect on linear thinking immediately led me to remember the sort of experience I always have on one of my (and this course's) favorite web sites: Wikipedia. In this blog I'll attempt to explain how my average visit to Wikipedia.org is like getting sucked into an e-labyrinth, where I click links blindly and can't find the exit for hours on end.

When an individual chooses to enter Wikipedia, either to find out something they're dying to know, fact check a friend, edit an article or simply amuse themselves until their eyes bleed, they're given the option to search their topic in any number of languages, with the corresponding number of articles in each proudly displayed next to each. My constant choice is English, with over 2,983,000 articles. I know going into this that articles can be as varied as night and day, but that somehow they are literally ALL connected by the links on the page. You can go from reading about Julie Andrews to rotary saw in about 7 clicks. It reminds me of playing "apples to apples", a game of random disassociation.

Once on the home page, a slew of options already awaits you, and you can read about current events, this day in history, featured articles, or (my personal favorite) simply press "random article" on the side and see where it takes you. Here is truly where the labyrinth of internet-fueled non-linear thinking begins....

Say you get a page about Gustaf Komppa, a Finnish chemist whose page is about 2 paragraphs long and looks (note: looks) completely boring. I've only read the first sentence, my attention span quickly diminishing, and having decided it uninteresting, ready my mouse to click on something a bit better, the word Switzerland in bright blue letters! Now here's a real page. A long table of contents that I quickly skim means I can choose to "learn" about something cool like food and avoid something lame like the Napoleonic era. Next I can click a link about Gruyere, my favorite cheese, go to another page to learn how it's made, have my eye caught by another bright blue word ('French onion soup'), and off we go into the labyrinth of Wikipedia, and I can't even remember where I began.

I think about what sort of experience I may have with, say, and Encyclopedia Britannica; I think I'd be a lot more likely to either actually finish an article, or just shut the volume after getting bored instead of clicking links or turning pages. In any case, I know what good wikipedia can be when I need to do a bit of light research, but I also know how it lures me into its deathtrap, with no idea how long I'll be in there, how deep I'll go, or what exactly I will have gained once I'm done.

"ONE WORLD: ONE IMAGE: ONE CHANNEL" - MTV and American Cultural Imperialism

Music Television (MTV) was launched in America in 1981, in Europe in 1987, and today reaches over a quarter billion homes in 100 countries on 5 continents worldwide. Many consider MTV to be the televised equivalent of Coca Cola; you can get it just about everywhere in the world, it rots your brain like Coke does your teeth, and it's American through and through. With our class on cultural imperialism and absolute influence theory in mind, I wondered what MTV's international success has meant for the cultural identities of those whose living rooms the channel has entered. Is every country under MTV's influence now Britney Spears obsessed, and totally Americanized- as they not only show American musical and fashion trends, but advertise American products- or does the channel change according to each country it is aired in? Are the chart toppers the Jonas Brothers and P. Diddy, or more native bands that suite the original tastes of the countries' cultures? I did a little research and reading of my own to find out.

On MTV's Italian website, I counted 11 out of 20 "Hit List Italia" songs were by American artists like Beyonce and Pussy Cat Dolls, with at least one British singer as well. The Indian site's music section is appropriately divided into Hollywood and Bollywood, the site is written entirely in English, and the vj's all have uncharacteristically light skin. My efforts to figure out MTV Japan's leanings were largely fruitless as my understanding of the language is obviously zero, but I did note one of the female presenters of the Video Music Awards Japan had an Anglo-style facial structure, reminding me of a disturbing fad that has hit Asian women both in and out of America: a plastic surgery called blepharoplasty that creates an artificial crease in Asian eyelids. I wonder how glorified this look would be if it weren't for channels like MTV, that take American popular culture and make it into Mass culture, that reinforce international inferiority complexes instead of glorifying the thinks that make us unique. It seems as though MTV has to form to the culture of the country it's shown in, at least a little, so as not to upset artists and record labels to the point that it's banned in a country, but can still, in not so subtle ways, push and American cultural agenda of hip hop and pop, light hair and light eyes, sex, bling, partying and cleavage on the rest of the world. And the fact that the young teens and adolescents who are exposed to this crap eat it up and turn their backs on their own cultural values and traditions is equally absurd and saddening.

If MTV were to exist purely as an arena for the sharing of new music from the countries in which it operated, or did more to share Norwegian speed metal with Italian House junkies, Indian bollywood with Folky south-eastern Europeans, Japanese pop with New York rap, and stoped imposing Americana on the entire world, we might have a lot more respect for one anothers' traditions, values, looks, and sounds. Until then, women are going to keep getting plastic surgery to look more like J-Lo, men from the Middle East will wear tighter shirts and more gel in their hair while the women are covered head to toe, and maybe Americans will feel a little less superior, with their white bread music and looks as compared to the spice of the rest of the world.

From Turkish Coffeehouse to Al Arabiya News Channel - The Evolution of the Online Public Sphere

The public sphere can be simply described as "a theater in modern societies in which political participation is enacted through the medium of talk", wherein individuals can freely engage in topics that are generally political. It gives average members of societies in which they have no real political weight the opportunity to share knowledge, debate and reflect- something which is democratic at heart, and gives those involved a sense of empowerment and political importance. Often times, the public sphere is a link between the public opinion it forms and political actions that reflect them. The public sphere has come in all shapes and sizes, from the European salons of the 18th and 19th century, to the Turkish coffeehouses of centuries ago. Today, with the two incredible phenomenon of the internet and globalization, the public sphere has morphed into something that transcends the nations in which they historically took place, the homogeneity of the people involved, and the topics discussed. Now people from across the globe can take part in discourse about current events and politics- some as speculators, some as observers, all as equals. I found a really poignant example of this in the website alarabiya.net, a web news channel that operates in Arabic, Farsi and English, wherein headlines and short articles of relevance ranging from the the Middle East to Technology to Culture are presented and commented upon by its many international readers.

The beauty and intrigue of Al Arabiya is the variety of the people who comment on said articles; these are the people that qualify Al Arabiya as a public sphere. Comments on this site, as opposed to those posted on other online public spheres like Slashdot, aren't posted immediately after the commentator presses send, but are instead subject to the review of mediators who work for the site. At first I thought this would put the cabosh on the multiplicity of the comments, so I checked out an article on Arab Israeli peace (one which I assumed would have completely varied opinions and wondered how many would be represented), and was amazed at the things I found. In no way were the comments what I would have expected knowing that they were previously being reviewed by an Arab news site before being posted. A brief overview of what I read included opinions ranging from "peace is but a dream", "Obama is a Zionist puppet", "Palestinian children need to stop being told that Jews are murderous pigs", a history of the persecution of Ashkenazi Jews, and "Hatred knows no logic". Each were posted by authors with Anglo names like Max and Andrew, Arabic names like Sherif and Esemerlda Mohamed, and symbolic names like Freedom. The range of English writing ranged from poor, conversation and native. Much of the posts were debate-like responses to previous posts, and all were generally on topic. If anything, they served as a good thermometer of international sentiment on the prospects of Arab-Israeli peace, as well as true show of how international availability and the openness of the internet has helped shape the public sphere into what it is today- something more multifaceted, heterogenous, and fascinating than what I can imagine it to have been in decades and centuries past. Here, online, men and women, from countries with and without freedom of speech or freedom of assembly can make declarations, accusations, suggestions; send messages of hope and anguish for the world to read; and no doubt understand that what they say will be read and taken seriously by other average world citizens and not-so-average politicos alike. Who knows what sort of effect these may have in the shaping of future world politics?

If you've ever read the comments on youtube videos, you can attest to the sheer lack of relevance and reverence that they represent. That is not a public sphere at its best, or even at all according to many, such as Habermas', definition. But sites like Al Arabiya are popping up everywhere, and for the first time in the history of the articulate world, may help reflect the views of peoples, ethnicities, regions the world over. If globalisation really takes its full course, then by definition these opinions should begin to homogenize. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I'd like to look at it this way- we can't really place a judgemental title on these things, but if it means that they'll begin to look more alike because we'll begin to better understand the many things that we as humans actually value in common, and stop the differentiation that comes from isolated ignorance, then it can only be positive- no matter the outcome.