Coming of age with the Internet... Sally J. McMillan and Margaret Morrison

These authors went ahead and collected data in the qualitative forms of autobiographies. This approach was nice in being able to see different views of young college student adults and how the coming of the Internet has been a part of each of their lives. I have always had my own hypothesis on the whole "coming of the Internet" and how it "effects society as a whole". It is there and it is wonderful. Wonderful in ways just like some students stated in the articles such as convenience. Convenience to shop,to communicate at much cheaper rates, and my favorite is the learning tools the Internet gives us. An example of this would be one person who said " the Internet has changed my life. I now almost exclusively buy organic foods. I no longer eat red meat because of information I retrieved off of the American Medical Association's website and from sites authored by various environmental organizations."I believe the access of the Internet has given me the quickest and easiest way to read and comprehend (if needed) an article. for instance, Raby, when she used lots of words I didn't understand I just looked them up. I was already on the computer so it was "convenient". Before I would just read and not get the fullest understanding because I didn't have access to a dictionary and if I did it may not have the word i am looking for. Now along with Pros come cons. In this article it states "Many respondents reported that they feel in danger of losing themselves amidst the wealth of information available on the web." Going back to discourses, people can be misled by the Internet. An article could be biased whether it be fact or not, but biased in an underlying tone and it could be misinterpreted. Not all information on the Internet is correct either. For example,many of my Professors will not except Wikipedia citations because anyone can write anything they want on Wikipedia. I used to use it in high school and wasn't aware of this until college. I may have been misguided at one point and didn't even know it. I firmly agree with some of the students beliefs on how the Internet takes us away from social environments and in my opinion I do not think that is healthy. Families these days spend less time together. Ironically I was just discussing this in my juveniles and justice class. There would be less delinquent behavior if parents and children spent more time together. It also goes over the idea that "the younger generation such as younger siblings, etc are smarter when using the Internet". This tells me that some parents may be lost. If the parents do not know how to even turn on a computer then how are they going to monitor what their children are doing. Just like everything else it has its pros and cons. The Internet in my opinion is best used properly when in moderation. Use it and don't abuse it.

I did not fully understand the concentric circles used in the model of figure 1. I understand that it "contributes to the aspects of the participants every lives". However, I don't understand why the authors couldn't just state each of these in a list rather then a circle. I don't understand the relevance of the circle.

I do not understand if the authors agree or disagree completely with whether or not talking online and making another identity is OK. They claim it helps someone who is shy, yet it helps an introvert be more introverted. I felt there were a couple points made here that contradicted each other. I understand they are both valid points along with many others but sometimes in this article its hard to see which points they favor.

Along with the relevance the article had with discourses as I mentioned above, there was relevance with youth as a culturally constructed category. I believe this goes to say that the Internet as well as teens and young adults have changed over time. We see in this article, and in life in general,that the older generation does not have as much experience with the Internet as the younger generation does.