What Do Teenagers Need?

http://www.parents-and-kids.com/parenting/en/what-do-teenagers-need/

This is a little site I found which tries to help parents understand their children by offering tips, encouragement, knowledge, facts and statistics. It's a way for parents who maybe feel distant to their children or just want to relate to them more.

I thought it was quite an interesting site because it talks a lot about children growing up and moving into adolescence and the difficulties they face during this change. It has quite some good facts and opinions that not only support our hypothesis, but reflect our questionnaire results and other information we have come across. I'm feeling soon that we will be able draw up a conclusion to what we have found out and start coming up with some improvements for the CBBC site that promotes safety and encourages participation.

I think I will just give a brief over view of some of the things that are featured on the link above. It starts off by talking about how there are more difficulties and dilemmas that children face when becoming a teenager and growing up, especially these days with such things as the increased "virtual world" and globalization.

It moves on to talk in some depth about in this transition from child to young adult how they start to want an identity. They want to know who they are and develop an identity. It becomes about deciding what their values are and these are the things that eventually shape them into the person they want to be. In this shift from child to young adult they are looking for acceptance, a place where they feel valued as a person and the internet these days seems like a good place to find this acceptance.

In this day and age teenagers are ever growingly becoming more involved with the internet and it's popularity. They start to live in the virtual world, seeking knowledge, comfort and populating it with their presence. The internet is seen as a distraction for them. A way to unplug from reality for a little while. It becomes their source of knowledge, communication, entertainment etc.

It states that due to the rise of globalization that "some people even feel that the true tutors of our children are not school teachers or university professors or parents but online and offline filmmakers, advertising executives world wide".

If this is true then maybe there should be more websites out their like CBBC that not only try to appeal to a young persons interests but also tries to educate them.

I feel that some of the information I have come across on this site is highly reflective of some of the thoughts and opinions I have already mentioned throughout this blog. The internet is a place for young people to understand who they are and feel like they have some kind of meaning, even if it's through this so called virtual presence. They want to be accounted for, but also want to explore, develop and publicise themselves.