Impact on Culture

One of the most controversial topics out there currently is how technology has made our teenagers different from their predecessors. Have you ever heard of adults saying, "Back in my day, we didn't play on iPads or gameboys. We spent all our day playing outside." Unfortunately, I was one of those people too. I would express myself this way when seeing kids spending all their day playing video games and not even interacting with their own siblings. I would think, "What is happening to society? We are all going to be illiterate in 10 years from now!"

But, when we talk to teens about their technology usage, I feel that they compare it to their phones or tables being like their heart-without it they can't survive. In a Huffington Post article, it was expressed that "social networks -- and the gadgets they run on -- aren’t a distraction from real life, but a crucial extension of it.” Huffington Post article. Adults may frown on this but they do not really fathom what the younger generation is feeling with or without technology. In a way, I feel that adults underwent this same issue during their day when TVs and radios were introduced. The grandparents must have probably made the same comments as to how people would stop reading out of newspapers and books because the younger generation was too immersed in TV viewing and radio listening. Well, that young generation of TV and Radio users survived and they turned out just fine. Wouldn't it be the exact same result with the teens of the Digital Age?

Teens get a sense of belonging when they have technology in their lives. My tech professor shared an excerpt in class last time out of the same article above, Huffington Post article which really expressed a teen's viewpoint on technology and how it shapes her life. 

“Not having an iPhone can be social suicide, notes Casey. One of her   friends found herself effectively exiled from their circle for six months because her parents dawdled in upgrading her to an iPhone. Without it, she had no access to the iMessage group chat, where it seemed all their shared plans were being made. "She wasn’t in the group chat, so we stopped being friends with her,” Casey says. “Not because we didn’t like her, but we just weren’t in contact with her.”

After having read this excerpt, I really thought about how hypocritical we can be with our younger generation sometimes. I remember being given a computer with dial-up connection for the internet in the late 90s. I would spend countless hours on the internet searching random stuff and chatting with strangers on group chats for N'Sync and Britney Spears. Isn't that what our teens today are doing, except for the fact that they use different social media? What is the huge difference between our time period and this new generation? We survived; I am pretty sure they will too.

It all comes down to how efficiently teens use the technology they have. If they use it correctly, they will get so much out of it! But, it is up to us to guide them on how to use it.