Matthew Johnson’s, “Digital Literacy and Digital Citizenship: Approaches to Girls’ Online Experiences” offers his reader insight into the current relationship that is going on with the digital realm in relationship to our youth. Johnson provides sufficient evidence that the online world may be harmful to youth but what I found very intriguing was the justification that Johnson had for encouraging a relationship between our youth and their role as “digital citizens(342)”.

I think that the most important question to ask is what are we to do for our children if educating them about the digital world does not prove to change the dangers that online society present. Because people can hide behind social media, technology is presenting our youth with new obstacles, such as “retouching(351)”, unrealistic body images and a forum where anyone can use a voice regardless of their knowledge concerning a topic. According to NObullying.com,

“Over 7.5 million Facebook users are under 13 years old. Over 81 per cent of teens admit that bullying is easier to get away with online. About 20 per cent of kids that are cyber bullied think about suicide”.

As adults we need to work to restrict bulling online while simultaneously encouraging our children to participate in online discourse. There is obviously an issue and I think that we are more concerned with the revenue that is received from the evolution of these online resources and the desire for increased speed that we are able to receive information. Our children are obviously being neglected in their online education and I think bad things will continue to happen unless we figure out how to better educate them.