Reading Week #5

I was pleasantly surprised that the research is showing that our youth are not going down the tubes with iphones in their hands. As I read through these chapters, I was reminded of my parents complaining about the youth of the day, namely me and my siblings in the 1960s. According to my parents, we were always on the phone, sitting in front of the ‘boob’ tube and we were going to amount to nothing! There were no malls yet, but we had the public pool, roller rink and pizza place to hang out. We had to ride our bikes, but by golly we got there. I will fast forward to my children, always on the phone, in front of the TV, they were going to amount to nothing. But instead of party lines, there were phone extensions in every room and we had two TVs. Atatri also came out and computers were in their infancy. The malls and arcades were the hang outs and carpools were born. Now to modern society these kids are always on the phone and they sit in front of a game station or computer. These kids are going to amount to nothing. The malls have become chat rooms, myspace  and facebook. So what’s the difference? Not much really.(pg 114, para 2) We didn’t turn out so bad and my children are fairly normal tax paying citizens, as will our youth of today. There will always be best friends and bullies, gossip and rumors, breakups and heartbreaks, ‘greasers’ and jocks, prom king and queens. It’s all the same, except with each generation the speed of the media has increased. Where it used to be days or hours to hit the ‘grapevine’ now, it’s instantaneous.(pg 112 para 2) And once it has hit the net it is ‘out there forever’ something that must be ingrained early and often.

My and my children’s circle of friends was fairly tight, usually encompassing just our neighborhood and school friends, we only expanded our horizons if we went away to college. Dating and having a relationship of any kind was tightly controlled by the parents.  New technology has expanded the scope of relationships so that they can flirt, date and, breakup outside of the ears and eyes of the parents.(pg 145 para3) Today’s kids’ circle has expanded to encompass the world, even the moon, but they still maintain a basic core of friends from school, activities and their neighborhood.( pg 82 paragraph Peers and Friendship).

I have a new appreciation for social media and I may just invest in an ipad.