I've got more than personal experiences, I've got book learnin'. And I'll probably read this book - because that's really what this "opinion" piece is, a puff piece to pump up book sales. So here's my breakdown based on what I've read, what I've observed, and what I've surmised: 1) "Digital natives, ettiquette be damned, kids don't know how to interact anymore." Gonna agree with this one. People learn to navigate the waters their boat is on. Kids and teens these days are required to be Facebook literate in the extreme. There's no real way to leave school at school; Facebook makes that social sphere a constant experience. Given 24 hours in a day, some of which must be spent sleeping, if you're giving over an extra hour a day to managing your online profile, that's an hour less per day you can give over to meatspace socialization. Sociologists will also point to teenage years as the time when people are most likely to experiment with identity; this is far, far easier online than it is in person. Inherent in this discussion is the judgement that online interaction is less valuable than interpersonal interaction. I think that depends on what value we're judging. If we're talking about "happiness" then I think it's fair to say that yes, the kids are getting cheated. If we're talking about "culture" then I think it's more accurate to say that the kids are going a different way than their parents. It's a thinner, bleaker world but it's still a world. Sherry Turkle has made a 30-year career out of studying exactly this at MIT. 2) "Blame the parents." Well, don't blame the kids. They're adapting to an arbitrary ruleset they had no say in crafting. Parents, for their part, largely act in self-interest (so long as you understand the Elizabeth Stone quote: "Having children is like letting your heart walk around outside of your body"). Parents follow societal cues - as they say, kids don't come with an instruction manual, so most parenting is guided by peer pressure. And peer pressure has, increasingly, been about paranoia. Lenore Ashkenazy (the 9-year-old on the NY Subway lady wrote a great book called Free Range Kids that basically breaks down the 31 flavors of paranoia that have seeped in and turned parenting into a horror movie. Long story short, she blames America's Most Wanted. Start on pp. 16; you can "search inside." I can think of three different kids that got lost in the woods whose searches dragged on days longer because their parents told them "not to talk to strangers." As a consequence, they actively avoided their rescuers despite being alone, hungry and dehydrated in the woods for multiple days. Now - do you blame the parents for that? Or do you make a snap judgement that anybody who tells their kids to go ahead and talk to strangers is a social deviant? 3) "The result, Boyd discovered, is that today’s teens have neither the time nor the freedom to hang out." There's a Daily Mail article (yeah) called "How Children Lost The Right To Roam in 4 Generations." This graphic used to go with it: A lot more homework is assigned these days. The focus is on standardized tests. Social media is a necessity. Is everyone so overbooked that they have no time for anything but Facebook and PSATs? Well, sounds like white people problems to me, but Frontline did a pretty goddamn good job of summarizing the problems back in 2008. I wholeheartedly recommend watching it. 4) "Forget the empathy problem—these kids crave seeing friends in person." I'm gonna go ahead and call bullshit on this one. So would Sherry Turkle. So would Frontline. There has never been a generation of teenagers since the invention of the teenager (a largely Post-WWII phenomenon) that has not gotten what they wanted by hook or by crook. Teenagers are not hanging out the way teenagers used to hang out because they have found other acceptable means. Now - did parents and society create those acceptable means? YES. Are the conditions on the ground such that teenagers cannot differentiate between the signals-poor environment of online interaction and the syntactically and symbolism-rich environment of interpersonal contact? YES. Whose fault is that? WHO CARES? We probably oughtta try and fix it rather than point fingers. Particularly at parents who, if my experiences with my friends and myself are any indication, are mostly just trying not to screw up so hard. Fuck you for blaming me. I'm just trying to keep her from becoming a serial killer and here you are laying the woes of the world at my feet because I bought her an iPhone. Eat a dick, Wired.
I think it also depends on who we're judging. I've 'met' a lot of social outcasts on the internet. Some people just aren't capable of interpersonal interaction because of mental makeup or what have you, and previously maybe they didn't have any alternatives. Now they can shack up with other people like them on the internet, where things that make interpersonal relationships click are deemphasized. You can argue that it's a bad thing that we cater to people like that when we should be teaching them to be sociable, but I think the reverse is true, that it's a good thing they can have any interactions at all. So I guess the internet can turn potential loners that were never going to have much 'real' interaction to begin with into people with friends, online or not. Very generalized, but you get the gist. It was a shitty article, perfectly apt for truereddit. Blame shouldn't even enter the equation. I merely wanted opinions on whether their thesis was true. I read that Daily Mail article, I think it was linked in the comments. I had an atypical childhood as far as freedoms, but I still find myself reflexively noticing and wondering whenever I see a kid who looks <10 by themselves. Especially if they're near a street with cars. This reflexivity makes me think it's a societal issue rather than a parental one -- I'm not a parent, but I still have certain thought-patterns which I acknowledge are silly but continue to have. So a final question: is it something to "fix," as you say? On the face of it seems obvious that kids should have freedoms not limited by overbearing society and stupid curfews and expensive cars, but you make the convincing argument above that teenagers are the ones driving this trend. If they are, who are we to try and fix it?Inherent in this discussion is the judgement that online interaction is less valuable than interpersonal interaction. I think that depends on what value we're judging.
Ignore all the "the problem is you" crap, that's not why I shared this article.
Breaking this down into excessively simple terms: Let's take ten people. Two of them are extroverts, two of them are reserved extroverts, two of them are reserved, two of them are outgoing introverts, and two of them are introverts. Note that by "introvert" and "extrovert" I do not mean "people who choose or don't choose to interact with others" as I should - I mean "people who can or can't smoothly interact with others." there's probably a better word. Humor me. Prior to the internet, the extroverts had lots of interaction. The reserved guys had a modicum of interaction. The introverts didn't interact that much. However, chances are good that the introverts were interacting with the extroverts simply because the extroverts interact more. So in any engagement, the introverts are interacting with people who are good at interaction. After the internet, the extroverts have lots of interaction. The reserved guys have a modicum of interaction. The introverts may very well be interacting more - but they're also interacting more with other introverts. Without a value judgement on it, the interaction they're getting is definitely of another quality than what they would have gotten otherwise. So the question is this: are people A) better off with minimal interactions among people who are socially adroit? B) better off marinating in the culture of /b/? I don't think that we can answer this question easily and succinctly. I do think that in a society where the adroit are calling the shots, the /b/tards are at serious disadvantage. And, until the Internet becomes substantially more important than, well, everything else in life, the adroit will continue to call the shots. "Well put," said the 3-year moderator of r/foodforthought. ;-) At the age of sixteen, I once called home and left "Hey, it's me, I'm in Dallas, I'll be back by Monday" on the answering machine. Yet I'm of a like mind. My primary objection to the article, and I suspect my primary objection to the book (which I do intend to read) is that it's an attempt to put one factor at the root of many problems. I read Free Range Kids and I've given it as a gift three or four times. Bringing up BeBe is similarly countercultural in that it wholeheartedly suggests de-emphasizing the importance of children to the benefit of children and parents alike. Let me clarify that point a little bit. Soviet teenagers wore Levi's. I have a friend who grew up in Samarkand watching bootleg American videos they paid for with equally bootleg Marlboros. Choice will find a way. The article basically makes the point that kids would love to be as normal as their parents, but their goose-stepping, paranoid parents won't let them. I'd argue that if Soviet kids can lead rock'n'roll lifestyles, over-pampered 'tweeners in Minneapolis can, too. But they aren't. And that's the important thing - I don't think there's a lack of drive, I think there's a lack of motivation. Kids aren't socializing the same way their forebears did because they've found alternatives. Those alternatives, as argued here, there and everywhere, are a poor substitute for what came before, but the kids don't know enough to reject them. Which means that yes - "the teenagers are driving this trend" but at the same time, they're kids. We don't let them vote, we don't let them drink, we don't let them rent a car, we don't let them join the army, we don't recognize their first amendment rights. Sherry Turkle and others have argued that without a conscious effort to re-socialize social media, an entire generation will suffer a degeneration of their socialization skills. That's my biggest beef with Reddit, by the way. I've gone around and around with them about how to make their universe more social, more human. They don't give a shit. Probably because they're just kids, and they're part of the problem.Some people just aren't capable of interpersonal interaction because of mental makeup or what have you, and previously maybe they didn't have any alternatives.
It was a shitty article, perfectly apt for truereddit.
I had an atypical childhood as far as freedoms, but I still find myself reflexively noticing and wondering whenever I see a kid who looks <10 by themselves.
So a final question: is it something to "fix," as you say?
but you make the convincing argument above that teenagers are the ones driving this trend. If they are, who are we to try and fix it?
Regarding your introvert/extrovert thought experiment, what answer would we get if we asked the group in question whether they prefer being in A or B? Which choice is objectively better is (maybe) different than which they themselves would choose. I couldn't agree more -- I've seen this play out so many times -- unfortunately I have more pressing things on my booklist than books about parenting, which is not a hobby I'm taking up anytime soon, so I'll have to shelve that book for now. Looks entertaining. As for your clarification ... I get what you mean. Lack of motivation. The next generation will quite possibly have even less.Bringing up BeBe is similarly countercultural in that it wholeheartedly suggests de-emphasizing the importance of children to the benefit of children and parents alike.