- 7 months ago
How a whole generation has grown up with access to the internet and social media, and the risks and realities they face in the online world.
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00:00Tonight's program may not be suitable for young children.
00:06Viewer discretion is advised.
00:08Viewer discretion is advised.
00:39They've created their own virtual society.
00:42When I'm online posting things, I'm completely 100% inmate.
00:46I had a whole different persona online.
00:49I was only 14. I looked like I was 18.
00:52It's a world largely hidden from parents and teachers.
00:55You can be more crazy online because there's no one watching to see what you're actually doing.
00:59In general, it's pretty bad.
01:01If I were a parent and I saw half the things, I would cry, I think.
01:05My son had these online relationships that were completely invisible to me.
01:11Is a predator looking for your child?
01:14But while we struggle to keep up, have we allowed our fears for their safety to run wild?
01:18They don't realize that when they're sharing on that keyboard, it's like, let them on in, baby.
01:24It's not going to go away. It's not a passing fad.
01:27And nobody's really in charge.
01:30Tonight, Frontline takes a peek inside the very public, private lives of kids growing up online.
01:36And I need to see a place.
01:56You'll laugh when you get dominated in the face by it.
02:19Why'd you turn the firewall on?
02:24It's Friday night, and six friends are having a party.
02:35They've set up camp in a basement rec room with desktop computers, high-definition monitors,
02:41and an excess of caffeine.
02:45Within minutes, they're locked in battle.
02:48There you go.
02:49There you go.
02:50Die.
02:51Oh, man.
02:54Across town at a local community center, another party is getting started.
02:59On one screen, the latest top-rated YouTube video.
03:10On another, a new heartthrob.
03:12Oh, look, that it is.
03:17Nearby, in his bedroom, a 13-year-old boy is updating his profile on MySpace.
03:23My name is Clay Calamity, so I just picked Calamity because I thought it sounded cool.
03:29These are links to comment me, message me, or add me as a friend.
03:34Downstairs, his seven-year-old brother is getting a primer in socializing on the web on Club Penguin.
03:41He invited me.
03:43He said, if you want to be your friends.
03:45I'm his friend now.
03:56This is Morris County, New Jersey, but it could be anywhere in America.
04:02Here, like in the rest of the country, some 90% of teenagers are online, a number that's still growing.
04:09My mom is not home.
04:11It's 3 in the morning, and I can be as loud as I want, so that's what we're going to do.
04:16For teenagers, the Internet is an outlet for self-expression.
04:21Hey, guys, what's up? It's me, Josh.
04:23A place to complain about adults.
04:25My parents, a.k.a. the parental unit. Yeah.
04:30And a means to connect with each other.
04:33My name is Lorenzo, and I want to be your friend.
04:36This is the first generation to come of age immersed in a virtual world outside the reach of their parents.
04:43It's really hard to control what our kids are doing online.
04:48What we have here is kind of the new Wild West.
04:51Nobody's really in charge.
04:53Cupid, boy.
04:55It's just this huge shift in which the Internet and the digital world was something that belonged to adults,
05:01and now it's something that really is the province of teenagers.
05:05So there's a proliferation of pictures and videos and them living their lives, in essence, online.
05:12This is a generation that sees online not as a separate place you go, but as just a sort of continuation of their existence.
05:20It's socialization. It's learning about life.
05:24If I were to disconnect now, I'd probably sit in this chair for the rest of the night.
05:29I wouldn't know what to do with myself.
05:31You need to have the Internet on to talk to your friends, because everybody uses it.
05:34It's like a currency. If you don't use it, you're going to be at the loss.
05:38It's a pain.
05:40Greg lives with his parents in Chatham, New Jersey.
05:43He relies on it so heavily. I mean, I don't even think he knows that he relies on it. It's just part of his persona.
05:50I can be in the same house. I'm at my desk downstairs, and Greg is doing homework upstairs.
05:56And I have a better chance of getting his attention by emailing him, because at least I know he'll see it.
06:02You go upstairs, and they're in tune to their machine, or they're talking to 25 people at once.
06:08So it's an intrusion if I go in there.
06:11You know, you go away on a vacation, and they're texting all their friends. There's like no break.
06:17They're unwilling to be out of the loop for more than, you know, an hour.
06:22Okay, Mom. When I send you a text, go to Messages, Inbox, OK.
06:28Which thing do I press to get the message?
06:30Mom, see if you can figure it out. You went to college.
06:34My parents, it seems like they don't know how to work a printer. They don't know how to work the Internet.
06:39They'll come up to me, they'll be like, I don't know how to get to my email.
06:41I'm like, well, Mom, that's not the email. That's Microsoft Word.
06:46Greg's father tried using AOL parental controls to monitor Greg's Internet use.
06:52I could see when he was trying to track me, so I would just bring up, like, Britannica.com, something he would want me to be watching, I don't know.
06:59And I would just slide it into the little viewer that he would be seeing, and I would go on my way, do whatever I want.
07:05He'd think I'm researching monkeys or something.
07:10Greg's high school, too, is struggling to keep up with a student body more at home with technology than most of its faculty.
07:18American debt versus...
07:19We have to be interactive because they're accustomed to sitting in front of a screen, and they've got five windows up, and they're talking to three people at the same time.
07:27We've got almost every instructional space in our building now with an LCD projector.
07:33We've got smart boards in the classrooms.
07:36We've got podcasting.
07:38Teachers are broadcasting sections of their classes so that kids can revisit those at a later time.
07:45We can't possibly expect the learner of today to be engrossed by someone who speaks in a monotone voice with a piece of chalk in their hand, and our teachers are not doing that.
07:54We almost have to be entertainers.
07:56If you look at the advertising world and the media world that they live in, they consume so much media.
08:03We have to cut through that cloud of information around them, cut through that media, and capture their attention.
08:09Is this an easy one? Where are we? Here we are. 19 responses. The answer is Middle Ages. Why?
08:18Just having a data projector in the ceiling means that you can show them almost anything that you want.
08:23Look at all these images. See? These take place at different times.
08:27To walk into a classroom that doesn't have any of that media must be like walking into a desert.
08:33One more. I want to take you one step further.
08:36Technology on the whole has made me feel like a bit of a dinosaur. You and my colleagues tease me.
08:42What is there?
08:43There are times when my students know how to do things that I can't do technologically in the classroom, and I just let them take over, and they're naturals.
08:53James?
08:54Rose Purpora has been teaching English at Chatham for three decades.
08:59There are more students who struggle with the ability to focus than there were 30 years ago.
09:07They are so overexposed to the quickness of things and the immediate responses.
09:14It's just all at their fingertips.
09:18So when you have to reverse that and have them be quiet and give answers and carve out meaning, I think it's difficult for a lot of students.
09:33I never read books. I'll be honest. I can't remember the last time I read a book.
09:38Nowadays, people are so busy that they need to get summaries of it, like spark notes.
09:43You can go on. It's a legitimate source. It pays enough attention to detail that you can get the assignment right.
09:50And you can read the whole book in a matter of pages. So I read all online.
09:55I've actually never read Romeo and Juliet, so I read it yesterday in five minutes.
10:00I feel like I've kind of cheated it. I kind of feel like I owe it to myself to read some of these books, but I just know I don't have time.
10:07I mean, if there were 27 hours in a day, I'd read Hamlet. I really would, but it's only 24.
10:13There's a rule here at the high school that they're not supposed to use spark notes or any other kind of study guide for an assigned reading.
10:20I guarantee if you ask ten kids if they read books, eight of them will say they spark noted.
10:26And the other two probably don't even read. I don't even know. Everyone spark notes.
10:30Some of Chatham's teachers have tried to control cheating by having students complete their writing assignments in the classroom,
10:38where they can't go online and borrow from other sources.
10:42For certain assignments, students have to submit their papers to an online service called TurnItIn.com,
10:48which searches the web for familiar words and phrases, alerting teachers to any instances of plagiarism.
10:55But not all of Chatham's faculty think the old rules can apply anymore.
11:01The answer is Renaissance. Renaissance, yes.
11:03You take it as a given that they're going to take stuff from spark notes and from other sources like that.
11:07The question is how we react to that.
11:09And we can react and say, okay, this is something that we have to fight against.
11:13The other way to react to it is accept it as a reality and say that that's how the outside world works.
11:19If I can find someone who's working in advertising and who knows how to push a product,
11:25and they can collect information from other sources and borrow and steal and put it together and reshape it,
11:31isn't that a skill that I want them to have?
11:33Yes, that's right.
11:34Are you saying cheating is okay?
11:36I'm not saying that cheating is okay.
11:38I'm saying that cheating is something you have to look at closer to say what is cheating and what's not cheating.
11:43Why does she create such polar opposites? Salty?
11:46I feel as though I'm fighting a good fight.
11:50I'm trying to hang on to what I think is the most important part of what I do.
11:56Who's next?
11:57But my time is over.
11:59You know, this is too much for me.
12:00It's not the educational arena that I entered into.
12:04Okay, tomorrow's slinking verb quiz? Okay.
12:07When school lets out, kids flock to their phones or laptops to log on to social networking sites,
12:17electronic hangouts which have largely replaced real ones.
12:22The two most popular, MySpace and Facebook, have over 160 million members combined.
12:29Pretty much everyone has one.
12:32It's like a section of the internet that is your own.
12:35Like, you can make it your personality exactly.
12:37Like, everyone has a MySpace.
12:39You can find the geeks, the nerds, the popular people.
12:43Just all sorts of people.
12:45At the heart of the social networking site is the profile page,
12:50the hub of teens' online social lives.
12:54Here, they describe themselves, post photos, receive comments from people,
13:00list their favorite bands, and most of all, accumulate friends.
13:05If I get on it, I won't get off until my mom tells me to get off.
13:09I just stay on MySpace.
13:10Like, you just message your friends and leave comments and picture comments,
13:14take pictures, like pretty pictures, and you put it on MySpace,
13:17and people comment it.
13:18And MySpace is a dick thing, yeah, it is.
13:21It'll tell you who's in a relationship, who's not in a relationship,
13:25when someone breaks up or when someone gets together.
13:31On MySpace and Facebook, kids vie for who can collect the most online friends.
13:38There was a competition of who could have friends, most friends.
13:40Yeah, that was the big thing at first.
13:42That was huge.
13:43At first, yeah.
13:44But now I have 2,000, blah, blah, blah.
13:46And, like, most of them you don't even know if you have 2,000.
13:49You don't know.
13:50Because you have to admit, you really only know about 200 people.
13:52Like, you actually met them in person, you know stuff about them.
13:55You're only best friends with, like, 50 people.
13:58And having 2,000 friends, you're like, oh, she's a fake.
14:01Yeah.
14:02Or he's a fake.
14:03Oh, my God.
14:04Social networking sites are also increasingly the place where kids hash out their conflicts.
14:10What are you doing?
14:11At Morristown High School in the fall of 2006, two groups of girls began trading insults on MySpace.
14:17Oh, I like this song, y'all.
14:19We would leave comments on their pages and leave messages to them just talking junk.
14:24And we just picked a big fight for no reason over MySpace.
14:29The whole, like, verbal fighting was all on MySpace.
14:33Never in front of, like, you know, never in school.
14:36Always on MySpace.
14:37Like, they would never confront us about anything.
14:40They kept on and kept on and kept on.
14:42They would not stop.
14:43They had left a comment on one of my friends' page talking about me.
14:46So I got real mad.
14:47So I was just like, okay, you're talking all this junk about me.
14:50And you can't say to my face, I'm right here.
14:52And so she got up and we started fighting.
14:54These two girls just went at it.
14:55You know, they were just, like, beating each other up.
14:57Chairs.
14:58Yeah, chairs and security guards.
15:00And then kids just busted out their phones and were videotaping this thing.
15:03You know?
15:04Why not?
15:05Get some memory of it.
15:06And someone posted on YouTube.
15:08Yeah.
15:09It was a pretty good video.
15:16After the fight, seven girls were suspended from school.
15:22It kind of made us famous.
15:23People were like, yo, I just seen y'all on YouTube.
15:28You serious?
15:29Like, everybody was just going crazy with the video.
15:33Everything happened, like, so, not fast, but it happened in the blur.
15:37Like, oh, I want to fight you so much and I hate you.
15:40Da-da-da-da.
15:41I want to beat you up.
15:42And now that you think about it, damn.
15:44My college is probably going to see it.
15:46I probably can't get this or that.
15:49Everything's out there.
15:50And it sucks.
15:54They're definitely more comfortable being very public than we were.
16:01Discretion, privacy almost seemed like a thing of the past.
16:07I think what we take so seriously, they take much less seriously.
16:16I've had, like, relationships with guys online, but, like, in school or in public, we're not actually friends.
16:23Like, we're friends, but it's not like, oh, like, yo, come over to my house tonight.
16:28It's all online.
16:29My code of guidance.
16:30Before she started going online, Sarah was more reserved.
16:34Like, once I was talking to my friend and he was like, send me a picture.
16:39I was like, I don't want to send my, like, a naked picture of myself because I'm not comfortable with, like, my naked body.
16:46He's like, fine, send it with, like, minimal clothing on and I'll send you one of me.
16:51So we're like, okay, so I went to my bathroom and I took the picture and then I uploaded my computer and I emailed it to him and then I deleted it off my computer.
17:00And it just is, like, something to do.
17:02It was, like, didn't really mean anything.
17:04Like, it was just, like, a picture.
17:14I used to have four pages of myself on MySpace, but I lowered it down to one.
17:19Yeah.
17:20And, like, in the pictures, like, you kind of want to look hot, but you don't want to look too hot so people think, ew, whore.
17:24Stick to my scotch tape.
17:25Aw, look at that dimple.
17:26Dimple.
17:27In my pictures, I try to smile on the side because of my dimple.
17:31That's me, the princess.
17:33I like moving around, posing and doing this, doing that.
17:36Model shots.
17:37Yeah.
17:38Model shots.
17:43In a way, the social networking sites are this digital representation of what we think of as adolescents.
17:49So what teens are doing is going around and trying on these different identities.
17:53I'm a goth, or I'm a punk rocker, or I'm a surfer, or I'm this or that.
17:56And the Internet's allowed them to display that identity in a very dramatic and very succinct way.
18:04I didn't want to be known as Jess.
18:14That was the last thing that I ever wanted, because all it did was remind me of the girl who had no friends.
18:21And I wanted to be the total opposite.
18:28For Jessica Hunter, growing up in Madison, New Jersey was a series of daily humiliations.
18:36I never fit the mold.
18:38I would try and try and try, and it just wasn't me.
18:43I was constantly being made fun of.
18:47People would push me into my locker.
18:49They'd constantly be calling me a goth.
18:52I felt so insecure.
18:55I felt like an alien, you know, in this all white bread town.
19:05But online, Jessica was reborn as the goth model and artist Autumn Eddowes.
19:12Email address, profiles, everything.
19:17Everything was Autumn Eddowes.
19:20Her parents didn't know.
19:22I knew that I could not tell them because they wouldn't understand.
19:25You know, like I would, I would line my ass off just to keep my identity sacred.
19:32She just withdrew.
19:33You never saw her.
19:34She wouldn't eat with us.
19:35She wouldn't, she just disappeared into her room.
19:38I would open her door, you know, try to get in.
19:40What are you looking at?
19:41And, you know, the screen would change and, you know, I was concerned.
19:44What's going on?
19:45Is she talking to bad people?
19:47What, what's going on here?
19:49You know, I was only 14, but I looked like I was 18.
19:55You know, I'd be in like lingerie or something.
19:58And more and more people started noticing.
20:02Like, oh, you're so beautiful.
20:05Like, I love this picture of you.
20:08It like really got big.
20:13I was on the computer all day, all day replying.
20:19Like I would hit the refresh button and there would be like 10 more comments.
20:24It was crazy.
20:25It was so crazy, but I loved it.
20:27I've heard from actual friends of mine that live in, you know, South Jersey.
20:34They were like, somebody came up to me today and was talking about you.
20:39And they were asking me, so like, have you ever heard of this model Autumn Eddowes?
20:43And they're like, yeah, you mean Jess, right?
20:46And the person would be like, no, her name's Autumn.
20:53I didn't feel like myself, but I liked the fact that I didn't feel like myself.
20:58I felt like someone completely different.
21:01I felt like I was famous.
21:13I get a phone call and the principal says one of the parents had seen disturbing photographs
21:20and material, mostly it was the photographs, of Jessica.
21:25And they were considered to be pornographic as far as she was concerned.
21:30I had no idea what she was doing.
21:34No idea what was going on on the internet.
21:36That was a big surprise.
21:39The principal ended up going to my website.
21:42Deemed it completely and utterly provocative, inappropriate.
21:47You know, it supposedly offended people.
21:50Everyone was calling me a whore.
21:53You know, when really the pictures were in comparison to the things that I've seen on the internet.
21:59They really were not terrible compared to, you know, the girls that are just taking pictures of their butts, you know, just with like a thong.
22:09And that's what other girls would do, like all throughout my school.
22:12Jessica's parents felt they had to intervene.
22:17I remember my mother came up in my room and my computer used to be right behind me.
22:27And she stood right behind me and watched me delete every single file.
22:33It was a lesson she had to learn.
22:36And the lesson being, you don't know who you can trust.
22:39And you've got to be very careful about where this information goes.
22:42And how people perceive these photos or this information.
22:46How they can take it and change the context of it and get you in trouble.
22:50And it was a tough lesson for her.
22:55It was all gone as quickly as it had begun.
22:58The fame, the adulation, the hundreds of friends.
23:05I was just completely erased from that whole world, that whole realm of the internet.
23:12You know, and it seems really stupid that like I'm getting upset over it probably to a lot of, you know, people.
23:18But if you have something that's that meaningful to you, to have it taken away is like your worst nightmare.
23:27My fear isn't that I have bad kids.
23:36My fear is that my good kids will make a bad decision, one bad judgment, and pay for it permanently.
23:47If it's on the net, it's open to anyone.
23:51There are no safeguards.
23:54Someone can always find everything.
23:57I'm not wrong, exactly.
23:59Evan Skinner is the stay-at-home mother of four teenagers in Chatham, New Jersey.
24:03Welcome, and thank you so much for coming.
24:05And president of Chatham High School's parent-teacher organization.
24:09There is no lack of parent involvement in this community.
24:12It can't be done without parent support.
24:14It is what is socially expected here.
24:17There is a culture of involvement.
24:20There's a culture of participation.
24:22And so, people do.
24:25Thank you so much for coming.
24:27Chatham, New Jersey is less than an hour from Manhattan by train, but has the look and feel
24:34of a small town.
24:37Parents here have worked hard to create a haven for their children.
24:41Good, how are you?
24:43Our kids are very much the children of a small town in a protected environment.
24:51Kids walk to school.
24:52There are crossing guards.
24:54It's incredibly friendly.
24:56It's, you know, it's safe.
24:58But the Internet, and social networking in particular, has punctured that sense of safety.
25:04The scariest, worst part for me is stalkers.
25:09It is somebody becoming obsessed with one of my children.
25:14I thought it was asparagus.
25:15Tastes like ginger and soy.
25:16And garlic.
25:17I have two very attractive daughters.
25:20You know, some guy that all of a sudden decides that really my daughter was meant for him.
25:26That kind of stuff scares me.
25:31Kids think, I'm in my home.
25:34How could anything bad happen to me?
25:36They don't realize that when they're sharing on that keyboard, it's like,
25:40let them on in, baby, because they're right here.
25:43Parents need to understand there are predators on the Internet
25:47who are more vicious than those who used to lurk in parks or playgrounds.
25:52Media coverage of online predators has been building in the last year.
25:57It's not being done to stop them before they strike.
25:59It's an all-new investigation.
26:01Oh, boy.
26:02Oh, boy.
26:04Tonight on To Catch a Predator.
26:07Congress has held hearings to address the question of predators' access
26:11to sites like MySpace and Facebook.
26:14The boogeyman is real, and he lives on the net.
26:17He lived in my computer, and he lives in yours.
26:20He's at home with your children.
26:22My mom calls it being an informed parent.
26:25She, like, watches Dr. Phil.
26:27She reads about all of, like, the crime that happens,
26:31like the date rape or something like that that occurs on the Internet,
26:34like meeting people on the Internet.
26:35So she's always been very cautious like that,
26:37but it's becoming sort of overbearing.
26:39She just has a really tough time getting past that.
26:42Did you find your class schedule, honey?
26:45Uh, no, I was going to check that.
26:49Is that what you're doing now?
26:50I'm talking to Jeff.
26:52Oh.
26:53As a way to keep tabs on her kids' Internet activity,
26:56Evan has stationed the one family computer in the kitchen
26:59where she can keep an eye on it.
27:01I don't know.
27:02But she says she still gets shut out.
27:04If the kids are on Facebook and I'm making dinner or something,
27:09they're edgy.
27:10I mean, there are times when I will close the refrigerator door
27:15and move in this direction.
27:17Boom!
27:18Screen goes black.
27:20Well, good evening, everyone.
27:22I'm Agent Bill Segaris, Computer Crime Unit.
27:25Um, first of all, parents need to take control of that computer.
27:31You need to have passwords.
27:33Take control of it.
27:35Evan would like to get the passwords to her kids' Facebook accounts.
27:39I have an idea of how I can do that with my kids,
27:41where I will have them give me their passwords
27:44but seal that envelope in some very safe way
27:48so that they know that I have not opened that password lightly,
27:51but that if they should get into any trouble,
27:53if they should disappear, if they should be abducted,
27:56that I would be able to break that seal
27:58and then get into that information.
28:00They asked me for the password, and I said,
28:01no, sorry, you're not getting it.
28:03It's my Facebook.
28:04It's my business.
28:05I'm ignoring them, okay? Don't worry.
28:07I believe that my mom feels so strongly
28:08about how we appear on the Internet
28:11that she would somehow try to get the passwords,
28:14that she would try to open the envelope or anything,
28:17because she does feel so strongly.
28:24Cam's sister Tori is just as reluctant
28:27to share her online life with her parents.
28:32I'd rather not use our computer
28:34and just use it when I'm at my friend's house
28:36than have my mom go into my, like, personal things
28:40in my private life and, like, take charge of it.
28:45It's my own stuff.
28:49My parents, like, they don't understand
28:51that I've spent since, like, second grade online,
28:54and then I know what to avoid,
28:55and I know pretty much, like, what can happen,
28:58and I think sometimes they forget that,
28:59because they didn't have, like, they didn't grow up online.
29:01Some of the random screen name IMs you, it says, like,
29:04hey, where do you live? I want to meet you.
29:06It's pretty obvious, like, this person might be a predator.
29:10Hit that block button.
29:11If someone asks me, like, where do you live?
29:13I'll delete them as a friend, like,
29:14why do you want to know where I live at?
29:15Like, I don't tell people where I live at.
29:20There has only been one major study
29:22of the threat of sexual predators online.
29:25Funded by the Department of Justice,
29:27the study confirmed what many kids have been saying all along,
29:31that most of them know to ignore unwanted solicitations
29:34they receive on the Internet.
29:37You know, most kids, they're not looking for trouble.
29:40The vast majority are just socializing
29:42with their friends at school,
29:44and when these weird guys send them a message,
29:47they just delete them.
29:49The study reported that one in seven kids
29:52said they had been sexually solicited online,
29:55but researchers found most of those solicitations were mild.
29:59Most of the sexual encounters, most of the sexual solicitations,
30:03they're not that big a deal when you actually look at them.
30:06Most of it is the 19-year-old saying to the 17-year-old,
30:11hey, baby, is that really the image that we come to
30:15when we think about sexual solicitations?
30:17No.
30:20And we have found kids who have engaged in risky behavior online.
30:23The fact is, they've engaged in a lot more risky behavior offline.
30:28Sexual predators are a risk, but all the cases,
30:33known cases of sexual exploitation involving social networks,
30:37have involved kids who have gone out
30:40looking for a meeting with somebody.
30:43They were not deceived.
30:45We need to start thinking about our kids less as victims
30:49and more as participants.
30:51Real problems, real damage can result
30:56because of things that teenagers do to themselves and each other.
31:00And that's what we need to be thinking about.
31:03I'm 16. I just turned 16 yesterday.
31:11I'm a swimmer. I've been swimming for seven years.
31:13I play golf.
31:14I'm really fun and outgoing.
31:17And I work hard in school.
31:19And a lot of people in my school are like,
31:22wow, she's smart.
31:26It's weird because I have this double,
31:29I have like this one life that's fake.
31:31That's like the all happy, go lucky, whatever.
31:33And then I have the real me.
31:34When I'm online, I'm the real person.
31:39I'm completely 100% me.
31:42Like I'll talk about anything to these people
31:44because I know they won't judge me.
31:48Sometimes it makes me feel better
31:49because it's like, oh, there's people out here like me.
31:51Like I can have a little like niche of my own,
31:53a little comfort zone.
31:55But sometimes it makes me feel worse
31:56because I know how many people are suffering like me.
32:01That is beautiful.
32:04Sarah has an eating disorder.
32:07I'll go on websites.
32:08I'll go on forums.
32:09I'll look for something called Thinspiration,
32:10which is basically inspiration to stay
32:12and become thinner than I am now.
32:16It's just like, here's other people who can do it.
32:18Look, this woman, she did it.
32:19I can do it too.
32:23She has a personal trainer,
32:24but she's probably anorexic
32:25or has an eating disorder.
32:29What the internet has done is provided these forums
32:31for anorexics who want to be anorexic
32:34to meet one another.
32:36They most deify anorexia.
32:39They call anorexia Anna
32:41and then elevate Anna to the goddess Anna.
32:43They say they're praying to the goddess Anna
32:46or they're asking Anna for help.
32:50These are women who take pride
32:52in their ability to deny themselves food
32:54and to keep their weight
32:55at this artificially low and dangerous level.
33:01I can find ways and tips and tricks
33:03to like binge or to purge
33:05or to starve, stuff like that
33:07that just makes living with an eating disorder
33:09a little bit easier.
33:11Like what foods to binge on that are like healthy
33:14and things to do like after you purge
33:17so that your throat doesn't burn as much
33:19and things like that.
33:20I'll be talking online to these people
33:24and I'll be like the anorexic person that I am
33:26and I'll just go on and I'll see like
33:28oh like wow like this person hardly ate today
33:30like mad props to them.
33:31Congratulations.
33:32I wish I was like that.
33:33But then sometimes certain days
33:35this like other side of me will kick in
33:37because this is disgusting.
33:39These people shouldn't be living like this.
33:41What's wrong with them?
33:42It's like part of me is completely Anna
33:44and part of me is anti-Anna.
33:46So it's like a complete struggle every day.
33:52What do your parents know?
33:53Nothing.
33:55Nothing?
33:56Nothing.
33:57All they know is I like to eat healthy
33:58and I like to exercise.
33:59They know nothing.
34:02It really helps for me to talk out my feelings
34:04to someone and know that people are listening.
34:07Why tell their parents when they have
34:09the whole world to talk to?
34:11You know it's better than talking to the people
34:13in my life.
34:14So if I put it out here
34:15at least I'm getting it out you know.
34:17And you guys can make what you want.
34:19The internet is always a willing listener.
34:22It's very seductive.
34:24And I thought I'd put my two cents in.
34:26You can do it in the middle of the night
34:27when you can't sleep.
34:28You can do it when you're tired
34:30without any makeup.
34:31I'm really bored.
34:32And you forget who can see the things you're writing.
34:35You forget the impact it may have
34:37in your life and on others.
34:39To you it's you and the internet
34:41and the people you want to read it.
34:43Not necessarily everyone who does.
34:45It's like second nature for me.
34:47I just I go on YouTube and I...
34:49When you combine those things
34:50with the immediacy and the power of the technology
34:52to allow them to act on impulse,
34:54that's when everybody gets into trouble.
34:56Last January, a group of friends from Chatham High School
35:07headed into Manhattan to attend a rock concert.
35:10Evan Skinner's son, Cam, was among them.
35:14However many can fit in Madison Square Garden,
35:17there was about that many underage high schoolers
35:20going into the city on trains.
35:23I was on the train.
35:26I was partaking in the fun on the train
35:28as well as all my friends were.
35:30And there was a ton of pictures taken.
35:33The next day, the kids posted the pictures and videos online.
35:40It didn't take long for Evan to hear about it.
35:44It was horrifying.
35:47Open, public, drinking, vomiting,
35:52on the trains going in, on the trains going out.
35:55I'm talking about hundreds of kids,
35:57three emergency rooms around Madison Square Garden
36:00who had to close because they had so many kids.
36:02Madison Square Garden ran out of wheelchairs
36:05to take drunken and unconscious children out of that place.
36:08Stop being a bitch! Get up!
36:11Well, I found out through one of the parents.
36:14And because I was the PTO president,
36:16I elected to share that information.
36:19I got a video! Put that on YouTube! I will!
36:22My mom decided that it was her duty, her civic duty,
36:25to send out an email to all the parents in the high school
36:28describing the events of the concert and the events on the train.
36:33So when parents are reading this, they read your son and daughter.
36:37If they went to the concert, they were drinking.
36:39And there are graphic pictures of your sons and daughters
36:42on the internet, signed, Evan Skinner.
36:45Well, my God, you cannot believe the response.
36:49I got emails from people I didn't know existed.
36:52About half of them were like, thank you, thank you, thank you.
36:55As a result of that email, I sat down with my child.
36:57I had no idea.
36:58He took me on Facebook and showed me pictures from the concert.
37:02It was absolutely appalling, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
37:05And about half were the full gamut of,
37:09who the hell do you think you are?
37:11You stay out of our lives, thank you so much.
37:13To, are you naive?
37:17And the kids were furious.
37:20I flipped out when that happened.
37:23Personally, I felt I had a right to,
37:25just because it was, in my opinion, so out of line.
37:29Just because of this email, a couple of my friends got in trouble,
37:34a lot of people in my school got in trouble.
37:36It just really made me mad.
37:41I'm just sort of starting to realize how difficult it's been.
37:44And so my mom and I have had sort of a tough year as far as getting along.
37:51He has pretty much cut off his family being involved in his life,
37:56other than we have dinner.
37:58And he doesn't share.
38:00He doesn't talk about what he does.
38:07He actually said that we had ruined his high school years.
38:11I mean, I'm choking up just thinking about it.
38:17I have spent almost two decades raising children,
38:23saying to myself,
38:24don't take it personally, don't take it personally,
38:26don't take it personally.
38:27I remember being 11.
38:28I remember being 13.
38:29I remember being 16.
38:31And I remember having secrets.
38:34But it's really hard when it's the other side.
38:39It's been said that the Internet has created the greatest generation gap
38:50since the advent of rock and roll.
38:53I wonder where they'll go next.
38:57I wonder what hangout they'll find
39:00where we aren't going to be watching.
39:03Because they'll find it.
39:06And there are so many devices they can use to connect.
39:10There are so many hotspots and friends' houses
39:14and libraries and cafes.
39:16All these places where they can go online
39:18where we can't control them.
39:25I clearly made a mistake putting that computer in his room.
39:29I allowed the computer to become too much of his life.
39:34My son had these online relationships going on
39:37that were completely invisible to me.
39:43When Ryan Halligan was in seventh grade,
39:46he told his father he was being bullied
39:49and asked him to teach him how to fight.
39:52Right after Christmas, we got into a routine.
39:54We would go down into the basement after dinner
39:56and we'd put on the red boxing gloves.
39:58And we had this conversation one night.
40:01We said, now, Ryan, you know how to fight.
40:03The last thing I want to see happen now
40:05is that you now start picking fights at school.
40:07Don't ever want to learn that you're now the bully.
40:09But I did say to him, I said, Ryan, if that kid
40:12or any of his friends ever lay a single finger on you,
40:15you've got my full permission to wail on him.
40:18After that, things got better.
40:23Ryan told his parents the bullying had stopped.
40:27But then, in October of 2003, he killed himself.
40:36You know, all I kept saying, asking myself was, why?
40:40Why?
40:42You know, I kept crying.
40:43Why, Ryan?
40:44Why did you do this?
40:51Anybody who would look at him as a child
40:54and then have a crystal ball and see into the future
40:56as to how he would die, you just wouldn't believe it.
40:59Yay!
41:06Just days after Ryan's suicide,
41:09John turned on his son's computer, looking for answers.
41:14I started to say, OK, there has to be something here.
41:21At the time, I was concerned about
41:23what everybody was concerned about,
41:25predators and pedophiles, right?
41:27I mean, that was what the media was talking about.
41:30You heard the horror stories.
41:32I thought, let me go log on to his AOL account.
41:35Let me see if Ryan's friends will open up to me online.
41:44I saw Ryan's screen name pop up,
41:47and I was really angry, actually.
41:50I thought someone was just playing a big joke.
41:53And to me, that was not funny at all.
41:55All these instant messages started popping up.
41:57You know, who are you?
41:58What are you doing?
41:59This isn't funny.
42:00Get off of Ryan's account.
42:02And I was typing back as fast as I could on,
42:05Mr. Halligan, is there anything anybody's willing to share with me
42:08that might explain why Ryan did what he did?
42:14We just started talking about what I knew people would say things to Ryan
42:19over the internet and at school.
42:21Like, you were such a loser and just really mean things.
42:28Over the summer, Ryan had become the victim of a vicious cyberbullying campaign.
42:34One boy had started a rumor that Ryan was gay.
42:38I didn't stick up for him at the time because I thought, you know,
42:41it was just that middle school bullying, it happened.
42:45But, um, it was real and it really hurt him.
42:53You know, back in my day, if you're getting bullied,
42:56it ends at the schoolyard.
42:57You come home and you have your safe haven.
42:59But not for Ryan.
43:00He came home and did what every other kid did.
43:02He went online and then now the Taunt's got to continue at home as well.
43:07According to Ryan's friends, the tipping point came
43:11when a popular girl at school flirted with Ryan over instant messaging,
43:16only to humiliate him later by telling him it had all been a big joke.
43:21It was a game she often played with boys online.
43:24I guess the fun is, like, dropping the bomb, you know?
43:29Oh, just kidding!
43:31And then that, like, crushed him.
43:34I mean, you wouldn't do that to someone's face.
43:38But online it's completely different.
43:40You can do whatever you want and no one can do anything.
43:44You're at your house, they're at their house.
43:46It's different.
43:51There's something about reading words.
43:53You read it over and over again and you start to believe it.
43:56The words make it real.
43:58One kid told me, you never know if it's your best friend
44:02or your worst enemy that's doing this,
44:05because so much of it comes to you anonymously.
44:08So you never know who to trust.
44:12As the days turned into weeks,
44:14John probed deeper into his son's online life.
44:18He discovered a folder on Ryan's computer
44:20containing a series of conversations between Ryan
44:23and a boy with a screen name he didn't recognize.
44:27The two of them were spending a lot of time
44:31exchanging information that they were finding online
44:34that had to do with suicide and death.
44:37They found one website that taught you how to hang yourself.
44:41So I gave you how to tie the noose.
44:45There was a website that Ryan and this boy visited
44:53and they commiserated on that you plug in your personality traits
44:58and what you like and dislike,
45:00and then they spit out the best way you can commit suicide.
45:04The most chilling conversation was actually a very short one.
45:11Ryan started off saying,
45:13tonight's the night I think I'm going to do it.
45:18And the kid fired back, it's about blank in time.
45:22Two weeks later, in the early morning of October 7, 2003,
45:33Ryan's sister found him hanging from a noose in his bathroom.
45:41In the weeks that followed,
45:43John felt compelled to track down the boy
45:45he thought might have been Ryan's co-conspirator.
45:48I approached him online with Ryan's eyes.
45:51And I said, I'm Ryan's dad.
45:54I asked him, you know, were you friends with Ryan?
45:57And he said, yes.
45:59And I said, did you guys ever talk about death and suicide?
46:05And he said, no.
46:07I just flat out asked him, so what is your name?
46:10And he gave me his real name.
46:13And while I still had him online, I called the house
46:16and I got the father on the phone.
46:18And I introduced myself to him.
46:20And I said, I'm afraid that your son
46:23is perhaps thinking of doing what my son had done.
46:26The response was kind of weird.
46:29It was, you know, he first said, well, I know nothing about computers.
46:32I don't have an email account, so you can't email this to me.
46:35And I said, well, I'd like to get it to you somehow.
46:38And he said, well, I'll have my wife call you when she comes home from work.
46:43That evening went by, never got a call.
46:45Another day went by, no call.
46:47Four years have gone by now, and John says he never got a satisfying response from the boy or his family.
46:59Occasionally, he still visits the boy's website, which is full of references to death and suicide.
47:04I had so much unresolved pain, and I instinctively wanted somebody to pay for this.
47:14I wanted to blame somebody so desperately.
47:20Blame.
47:28I feel the computer, I can't blame the computer.
47:34The computer and the internet were not the cause of my son's suicide.
47:38But they helped, I believe they helped amplify and accelerate the hurt and the pain
47:46that he was trying to deal with that started in person, in the real world.
47:53Across the country, cases of cyberbullying have been springing up more and more.
48:07A few have ended in suicide, most haven't.
48:11But it's clear that the Internet has become a new weapon in the arsenal of adolescence,
48:16one that's not going away.
48:20Let's get going.
48:21If somebody's been cyberbullied, what advice do we give them?
48:26We teach our kids to be kind to other people.
48:29Please, thank you.
48:31Opening doors, giving up their seat for somebody who's older.
48:36So in the same way, we need to teach them good cyber citizenship.
48:40You stop what you're doing, deny it to back, block the person, and tell an adult.
48:45We need to teach them good manners online.
48:47Stop, block, and tell.
48:52We need to teach them how to use the technology responsibly.
48:55Okay, and what should we tell them?
48:57And if we can do that, we can keep the kids safe.
48:59Receiving some mean messages and you want them to stop.
49:02You have a generation who's faced with a society with fundamentally different properties, thanks to the Internet.
49:09We can turn our backs and say, this is bad, we don't want a world like this.
49:13But it's not going away.
49:15So instead of saying, this is terrible, instead of saying, stop MySpace, stop Facebook, stop the Internet,
49:22it's a question for us of how we teach ourselves and our children to live in a society where these properties are fundamentally a way of life.
49:32This is public life today.
49:34Jess, I'll tell you.
49:35You're too much.
49:37Soon after Jessica Hunter's parents made her take down her website, she rebuilt it.
49:42She is back online as Otto Meadows.
49:45You know, I got to be honest, like...
49:47Jessica's father is surprised to find himself supporting her.
49:51I think you're actually going to turn out okay.
49:53It took a long time for me to finally say, well, you know, this may not be such a bad thing.
50:01She found a world that she could live in.
50:05And, yeah, you find on the Internet what you want, you know.
50:10If it's bad, if they're looking to hurt, that's what they're going to look for and they're going to find it.
50:14But if you're looking for a way to create or to reach out, that's what they're going to find on the Internet.
50:20You know, maybe they don't always agree with it, but they do support me, most definitely.
50:29And I think that, to a degree, they're proud of me.
50:33You know, I love you.
50:35You know, people say things about the Internet and they talk about the danger.
50:38From where I stand, I'm glad it's there.
50:40After her interview with Frontline, Sarah told her parents about her eating disorder.
50:59She started seeing a therapist.
51:00I want to get better, but you can't just go cold turkey on it.
51:06So I hope that it's not my life for the rest of my life because I know I should not be living like this and I can't live like this.
51:13But, like, I always look to the next day, but the next day is no way as good as I hoped.
51:17Last June, the class of 2007 graduated from Chatham High School.
51:40Graduates, you're all here to celebrate your accomplishments.
51:47Evan Skinner was there to watch her son Cam graduate.
51:52Cam and I have gone through some rough times.
51:55I think adolescence is just the most difficult time for kids to be kids and parents to be parents.
52:00I would say that the loss of open sharing and communication is the single most painful part of being a parent for me.
52:14Greg Bucata graduated, too.
52:17He had made a big decision.
52:20It'll be hard, but I need to disconnect.
52:22I need to just pull the plug on this Internet life for a little bit and see what it's like.
52:26Right now, face it, all I do is sit online when I'm sitting home.
52:30Gregory William Bucata.
52:33At the Coast Guard Academy, where Greg will be attending in the fall,
52:36he will be prohibited from using cell phones or the Internet for the first two months.
52:41His parents aren't sure he's going to make it.
52:44I think it's going to be a huge withdrawal for him.
52:47I think he's going to have trouble.
52:49Yeah.
52:49I really do, because he's never been without it.
52:52Cameron McCutcheon Skinner.
52:54Cam Skinner will also be going on to college.
52:58He says he's joined a new Facebook group for his college class of 2011.
53:04And he won't be giving his mother the password.
53:08Class of 2007, congratulations.
53:10Next time on Frontline, in a lawless territory,
53:37off-limits to the U.S. military and the CIA.
53:41There's enemy infiltrating from Pakistan.
53:43Al-Qaeda and the Taliban have regrouped.
53:46The situation in Afghanistan is more dire than we've seen publicly portrayed.
53:50From inside this secretive land.
53:52These guys have shown they are not going to quit.
53:55Frontline investigates the return of the Taliban.
53:58To order Frontline's Growing Up Online on DVD,
54:11call PBS Home Video at 1-800-PLAY-PBS.
54:16We'll see you next time.
54:19Let's go.
54:20Bye.
54:21Bye.
54:22Bye.
54:25Bye.
54:28Bye.
54:36You
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