(In keeping with my theme of AI-generated images, I had to work on this one to ask AI to add in the benefits of digital native tech use. It does, however, illustrate my worry about growing up too fast. And the images from the pre-Internet age make us look like simpletons.)
Kids and Social Media Usage:
After reading the very first article in our list of readings (Bagdy, 2018) I had a bit of a sense of dread. If I recall back to high school, I was focused on doing well in school, playing volleyball and running track, musical rehearsals and jazz choir, hanging with my friend group, being active away from my home, planning for my future after high school, and most certainly not in front of a phone or a computer. I'll admit that right now, when I spend too much time in front of my computer, I get twitchy. Certain online activities remind me of how I felt about doing my expense reports in corporate America--it was necessary and certainly work-related, but it didn't help me achieve my goals. The travel was important; reporting on what I spent wasn't. I regularly got a talking-to when I'd submit expense reports that were so large they had to go to the CFO for signature. I played the game and broke them up into several smaller reports, but still submitted them all at the same time. It just didn't feel like important work. I feel the same about certain activities online--many are necessary, more so now than ever, but they still feel like a distraction from "the world out there". And circling back to these teenagers in this study, I wished for them to be outside, playing sports, being in person with their friend group, and untethered from their devices. There is no question that they were all doing important, future-related things in their social media use. It just sounded so "adult". Kids get 18 years to be kids and the rest of their lifetime to be adults. Social media seems like a place where they have been forced to grow up so very fast. It does show you how incredibly competent kids can be, even if they lack the experience to navigate some of these online spaces. And I get it, this is their version of navigating the complexities of our interconnected lives and messy relationships--relevant both then and now. Of course, I'm wistful for something these kids have never known, so I'll probably get a lot of "get over it, lady" sorts of eye-rolls. I do know that after being on FB so much for this course, in order to be in several online communities, I was shocked to see I had 245 friends. I am no better for having all those friends, and probably only 30 are close connections.
All that said, as a working mom who travelled for work and was at the time married to an airline pilot, both of my kids grew up with iPads. They were on YouTube from an early age and played Animal Jam, Minecraft, and Roblox. I didn't hinder them from becoming very adept users of online experiences. And whether this is my saddest parenting moment or my proudest moment, I don't know, but I went to teach my youngest kid how to tie his shoes after buying shoes that had laces for the first time, and he said, "Don't worry, Mom, I can do it." He then proceeded to tie his shoes quite competently. I asked if his sister or dad had taught him, and he replied, "No, Mom, I watched a YouTube video." So, at 5 or whatever, my kid took it upon himself to learn how to tie his shoes using the resources he had at hand. If that doesn't fit the definition of growing up too fast, I don't know what does. Neither of my kids seems any worse for wear, and they both are way more sophisticated than I was at their ages, even if their maturity tracks to their chronological age. And in some ways, I think they are aware of the dangers of all this time online. I think it is Gen Z who coined the phrase, "Go touch grass". And I'll be doing that in just a moment.
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