PBS is not a forum for contemporary issues. When a society gathers around a 23-inch widescreen monitor to watch a 25 year old get hit in the nuts by his toddler, the term “sponsored by viewers like you” not only seem archaic and contrived but also completely accurate.

In a recent episode of Frontline, a long running PBS show, the topic of discussion was how youngsters are growing up online thereby creating the largest generation gap since the advent of rock and roll. It approached the topic with the utmost of grace, candor, and fear. The end result of the hour-long program was leaving me with an understanding that PBS is fucking scared shitless about the Internet.

It provided longwinded testimonials from parents of one small-town high school and how the Internet has negatively impacted their relationships with their children. Along with making note of the few cases of children killing themselves over cyber-bullying, Frontline also uses the statistic that there are over 130 million users on Facebook and MySpace, then tries to make mountains out of mole hills out of a few suicides. While immensely tragic in it’s own right, also proves very little and essentially muddies the argument that while a fraction of a percent of online users kill themselves, they spend about a fifth of the entire hour talking about it.

Given the general demographic that watches PBS, this can only be taken as fear mongering. Especially when considering that there is only one educated voice of moderation. Either it’s parents shouting for the Internet’s destruction, or teenagers smugly addressing the camera at how their parents are helpless to stop them.

I, being 25, had grown up in the Internet’s infancy. When I was a teenager, the Internet was amassed with spam. Internet Explorer chugged along on my 14.4 kilobaud modem only to get slammed with 50 pop ups essentially forcing me to reboot as closing one window opened three others. I was instilled with a certain distrust of the Internet and providing it with unfettered information about myself. I was skeptical. I wasn’t afraid or smug, I was somewhere in the middle…and still am.

Frontline was produced, written and presented for parents aged 50+. People who have trouble accessing email or who need to be taught how to double-click. There was a scene in this episode where a smug teen laughed at his mom as she didn’t know how to receive a text message, saying “Jeez mom, didn’t you go to college?” I hope Frontline debated long and hard about editing out the slap across the face the teen received after saying something so pompous and disrespectful to his mother, but I know all too well that she just sat there and took the insult. She took it because she felt stupid, and it’s tough to reprimand someone who makes a legitimate slam against someone’s intelligence. I’m sure she went to college, and I’m sure she has had contact with computers, but I’m also sure that in her lifetime she’d typed a term paper on an honest to god typewriter.

In the end, the Internet is not going to be dismantled and I’m sure there will be more people committing suicide over cyber-bullying. There will be no climactic end to the Internet much as there was no climactic beginning; it’s all a matter of when we joined the party. Parents and children need to be educated; the Internet is a tool, a powerful tool. Abuse and neglect are equally damning to the individual, and it should be the individual who should be demonized. The Internet doesn’t make people kill themselves and the Internet isn’t such a nebulous idea that it can’t be learned at any age. It’s streamlined itself to the point of malleable clay. This tool can be anything you want it to be, as much or as little a part of anyones daily life, but it’s not going away…we best learn to play nice.

Labels: Frontline, Online, review