You know when you’re walking down the hallway, it’s quiet, and yet there are many students walking around? Then you take a real look, and realize what all those students have in common. They all have a cell phone or technological device. But why in the world would they need their phones? They’re with their friends, who are they even texting? Each other? What about when two people are on a date and yet one of them –or both- can’t seem to have the common courtesy to get off their phone. Living without social media in this day and age would be considered torture. For some of us out there, we can’t even go a whole day without our phone or computer. Is the internet, social media, or technology changing our generation for the better or for the worse?
Firstly let’s talk about some things the internet has made easier for our generation. What about teenage or adult entrepreneurs. The internet has made it so much easier for a company to become known without the costly fees of advertisement services. You share your business on social media and wait for someone to share you. Using tags and notable words to help you get noticed. Since buying online is becoming a bigger phenomenon, the internet is making it easier for teenagers –the future of the world- to make money.
Along with this goes fame. The internet is constantly making people famous, whether it is worldwide fame, or just internet fame. Social media has helped to transform everyday people into red carpet-walking celebrities with their own reality shows (for better or for worse of course). Or recognizing people with talents and making them into bigger stars, whatever the arts.
Alright, let’s be honest, what teenager or child actually picks up the newspaper to read anything else besides the comics or their horoscope? Next to nobody. Right now if you were to go onto a site like MSN, Google, or Yahoo, the first things you’d see is the news, or major events happening around our world, or just our country. Being a teenager, I know that sometimes reading the titles of those news reports do spark my interest. This helps us as teens to be more aware of the world around us, to be more inclined to politics and start early on a plot to how we are going to save this world from the awful things the earlier generation is putting it through- jokes.
Say you were somewhere, in a service, at a meeting and you weren’t able to call someone. Nowadays you would just shoot them a text right? What about if you live father away from someone, cities or even countries and the price to call someone was just too much to spare; message them online! The internet is a nice place to meet friends and talk to people who understand you –who you wouldn’t have met otherwise. Now adults seem to claim that the internet is causing kids to grow up with no social skills, and although that may be true in some ways, it’s also beneficial. Being someone with social anxiety, I understand how hard it can be to just go up and talk to someone or be in big groups were everyone is having conversations, so making friends isn’t always the easiest thing to do. But do you know what is easy? Messaging the person online, getting to know them, and then it makes it all that easier to face them later on.
Now I know firsthand that the internet is not the greatest thing ever, and it certainly has its cons. The internet is a crazy place, and once you get on sites like Tumblr, you start to understand what I mean. The internet –that site specifically- is prone to opinions. Teenagers’ minds are very easily changed by a few facts and a moving picture, so just imagine what things you can convince to a bunch of lonely and confused teens. The internet very often gives out bad messages –mostly from other teenagers and immature adults- of how teenagers see the world. This stuff is known as ‘cool’ and is followed by others. It teaches them to rebel and gives them a wide range of vocabulary that teenagers of the 60’s wouldn’t have even thought to say.
This brings me into my next con, easy access. The internet gives children and young teens an easier way to get things. By things I don’t mean illegal movies or music, I mean like pornographic content. ‘Back in the day’ the only way children got into that kind of crap is if their parents had a stash, or didn’t hide it properly, and in that case, it was their fault. Well I mean, it’s kind of the same, if you don’t monitor what your child does on the computer, you can’t complain when you find out sooner or later.
It makes me think of rock and roll in the ‘50s. People were scared of what was going to happen, scared of losing what they were familiar with. They probably never would have imagined where the ‘60s would take them. Every generation has had something. We are the generation that has adapted to the social media revolution. The move to instantaneous technological communication has become normal. Our lives are driven by updates and posts. Right now we are happy with what we have, so stop complaining that our generation is bad, or our generation is doomed, because this is just our rock ‘n roll.
