Teens Today: A World Online. Part 1

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I’m in my mid-forties, and this week I realized that mine may have been the last generation to play outside in the street. Growing up for me in Spain meant skipping rope, red light-green light, hopscotch and catch. We also skated and, with four large rocks and a ball, a football field could be improvised anywhere –lacking rocks, school bags did nicely!-.Summers I spent morning till evening at the pool with my friends, and at the end of the day we’d all meet after dinner again, for outdoor cinema. I barely ever had playdates because we were outside playing, or at home doing homework; the kind with paper, pencil and eraser. And I consulted the encyclopedia to write papers, that pride-of-the-house huge tome collection that contained all the knowledge I could possible ever need for writing papers. I was lucky; we had not one but two encyclopedias, a general dictionary one and an 8-tome history of the world (until 1960ish).

My daughter will have little or none of this. She may go out to the park now and then with us, but as she grows older and goes to school her outdoor time will likely be there. To do her homework she will use tablets and computers, and online sources for her papers. She will likely also submit it online. She will talk to her friends on her phone or computer, via social media. Here in Finland she’s lucky, there are a lot of activities outdoors during the school day (yes, for real, in cold, dark Finland children in school spend more than twice as long as American children outdoors; they just need to dress appropriately).

A convention of the world\s most
famous MMO, World of Warcraft

But one thing is for sure, she was born into a fully-technological world. She isn’t even first generation, there are teens already surfing and hacking and gaming on MMOs and trolling like pros. To them, software and applications are something that will be learnt along with math, science and grammar. They will be awful at handwriting; who writes by hand anymore these days?

Many of you reading this can likely come up, just by thinking of it, of the bad things that come from being online, so I am not going to tell you about those. Instead, I want to tell you what researchers have told us are GREAT news for our kids from growing up online:

The benefits of the online world

Communication: years ago when the internet and “chatrooms” first popped up, everyone was talking about how being home alone would isolate people. The reality is exactly the opposite. Being online keeps our teens completely open to communication with their friends, but also our families; relatives on the opposite side of the globe are just a button away for a video call on a dozen free different programs.

Social networks: by being online teens are exposed to the world; yes, there is some bad yet, pardon my pun there’s a world of contact out there. They are part of something great. There are global communities for games, hobbies, languages, ethnic groups, shopping reading, and even chronic illness. A chronically-ill child can go online and find out information about his or her condition, and networks of people like him or her with whom they can chat, with people who have been there or are there.

Those very same social networks help make our children aware of the world out there: they learn of global climate change, politics, economy, cooperation, and good causes. They can join on causes and find a way to help on things that mean something to them. They are becoming active citizens at a much younger age.

Making friends: when the world is right there, a dozen clicks away, the sky’s the limit when it comes to friends. I have made friends with people online, some of whom I have never even met and with whom I am still friends 20 years later. As a matter of fact with some of them I have more contact than my physically-acquainted ones. Online friends –and romance- are a fact of life today.

I love being online and knowing that my daughter will grow up immersed in this kind of society. But on the online world there are also things that go bump in the night, and it’s impossible to spot them right away.

Take a pick, there are new social
media every day

In a world of social media were making a friend means one click, our kids have to decide in a second’s notice whether to answer yes or no. So, say a guy has been on a forum or chat and talked for a while or a few days with someone, or maybe they haven’t’ even chatted, he just likes that person’s forum posts and comments and has agreed on a few of them, he will likely have no qualms on clicking “accept” if a friend request comes in from that other user. Because in their view, they can always unfriend that person later, no harm done. Right?

An adult would never react that way. I would actually leave that friend request sitting there for a few days, stewing, while I thought of the pros and cons and maybe looked a little more into that person’s posts or chats. I might just ignore it. But your kid won’t. They’re wired differently.

In the next article I will talk about how development affects our kids’ decision-making mechanisms, and about the dangers related to them.

Read the second article in this series.