Catherine Glenn
September 25. 2014
Dr. Ruth Lahti
Introduction to Writing

The Internet is Bad...Or Not:
An Analysis of “What Adolescents Miss When We Let Them Grow Up In Cyberspace” by Brent Staples
The internet that I am using right now to type this essay has been a topic of controversy since it became available to the average person in the 1990’s. One of the largest issues that people(mostly adults) have with the internet, is the way it grabs children into its clutches and drags them into a swirling abyss of misinformation.
Anecdotal introductions are my favorite type of introduction, because theythe author a chance to share something of themselves with the reader. This can go long way, especially if the information they’re sharing relevant to the story. Staples starts off by introducing us to a social challenge of his childhood, which is common among us all as meeting a friend's parents. Wanting a chance with the girl of his dreams, he faces her extremely terrifying and intimidating father. Something that someone these days, would have been able to skirt around using the internet.
Of course there are positive aspects to the internet, as Staples mentions,“Teenagers these days are more connected to the world at large than than ever”. In that aspect the internet is an appealing construct because if used correctly it can end up bringing people together that would have probably never met in circumstances without the wide spread global communication. The internet was, according to Staples, created to “enrich our social lives”, which works well for elderly people and others who originally learned basic social skills.
Parent's inabilities or reluctances to monitor their children’s online social life things have gotten slightly more out of hand than they needed too. Though this essay was written in 2002, it is more relevant 12 years later than it was when