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Like Professor Levinson pointed out in Chapter 3, YouTube has had many effects on our culture and has become part of our everyday routines. I think that despite the copyright issues YouTube faces, it has served as a great platform for aspiring videographers, directors, actors, comedians and writers to practice their skills for the large online community.
I think an issue that arises that Dr. Levinson does not address directly is the fact that young kids go on YouTube even more than adults do. These kids grew up online and possess very natural, largely intrinsic computer skills to navigate the site and upload personal creations to it. I think it is important to take into consideration how their regular use of the site will affect their childhoods and futures. My younger brother and cousin are 12 and 13 and all of their friends have camera phones and digital cameras. They hang out on Friday nights in eachother's basements, make silly videos, edit them to add effects and weird noises and they post the final product on YouTube. It is all very innocent and even all their parents get a kick out of the productions they make, but I kind of worry about the type of message they are getting. Is it really ok to post all your behavior online where strangers have access to it? Do these kids know the limits of what is acceptable to post and will they grow up to put other less appropriate things up for all the world to see? Will their future employers find these videos 15 years from now? I think this is all important to consider.
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You raise a good point in the concern of posting maybe too much of your own behaviors. We have all stumbled upon or been sent Youtube videos of non-sense and that is part of the flaws Levinson discusses as the bad side of the "democratic" nature of Youtube. We just need to remain hopeful and influence young kids to grow out of it and eventually they will hopefully seek to limit the use of it and learn it's not necessary to post everything all the time.
ReplyDeleteI think teaching children what is and isn't appropriate to place on YouTube would go a long way in filtering out some of the nonsense found on Youtube.
ReplyDeleteExcellent points, all around! I've been told that some, maybe many young people have been migrating away from YouTube because it has grown increasingly more commercial.
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