The one thing that unites parents from the 1980s and those trying to raise today's digital natives, it's a deep-rooted fear of what the kids get up to when there are no grownups around.
This was a good read Mr.P.- I'll confess that in grade school I was a goody two shoes (whatever that means). One thing my mom taught me was from the Nancy Reagan school of response: Just say no to bullies & gang members and learn how to be your own best friend. So I can't relate to parents today saying they are worried about what their kids are getting up to since I was always predictably not getting UP to anything. You could usually just find me down by the little creek near our apartment, just hanging out by myself with the minnows and the chickadees. Thanks for the share Leah!
Smart insight re: the differences between peer pressure then and now. Had not thought of that. Here's some potential, somewhat related food for thought: it seems to me that "kids these days" talk (and care) a lot more about their so-called status at school and amongst their peers than I remember myself and my cohort doing. Maybe I was different or my social milieu was different though - I don't know. I'd like to know about other people's memories. But, if I'm right... then I think it would be fair to theorize that social media is driving this obsession with "status". And, it relates back to your point above about peer pressure and how it has changed.
I think this is right -- the status consciousness is a lot more vicious today, precisely because it involves competing in a much larger online pool. In a school of a few hundred kids, there just wasn't that much status to compete over.
Also, it's notable I think that with the rise of helicopter parenting, a lot of the concerns over 80s style peer pressure just faded away, only to be replaced by a much more worrisome form of online predation, harassment, bullying, and viral one-upmanship.
Cool post. You make some good points. Participation in a mediated community always involves some sort of threat to the tribe. For an oral culture, the book presents a threat to the tribe, for the individual can now have thoughts (and a vocabulary) outside the embodied, interpersonal community; the book is a transposition to the literate key, to use your language.
I would disagree with some of your comments regarding PSAs in schools. Bullying is bad, true. But PSAs in public schools that aggressively eulogize political trends of the day, especially with regards to identity politics/sexual matters, are not innocuous. People who have good reason to disagree with your take on sexuality should not be immediately demonized as bullies or proponents of "hate." This sort of easy moralism that so often passes for virtue in public school PSAs (not to mention corporate training sessions) tends to scapegoat dissenters and, perhaps ironically, lead to bullying. What could be more ironic than bullying the bully (and justifying yourself in the process)?
Parents have good reason to be concerned about where there kids go online, obviously. It is an abdication of parental responsibility to downplay the dangers of the Internet. On the other hand, there's a sort of nostalgic commonplace wherein people eulogize kids going outside and playing without parental supervision. It all depends on where you live. If you dwell near the 38th Parallel or The Tenderloin, and if you're a parent that has the slightest bit of sense, you're going to care where your kid plays.
I often think about how little my parents actually knew about my life as a teenager and shudder. But I mean, maybe all relationships require a certain level of wilful blindness in order to function?
I wonder about this. Somedays I think they must have just been shrugging and trusting that we'd make good decisions; other days I wonder how in the hell we were allowed to do some of the stuff we got up to.
This was a good read Mr.P.- I'll confess that in grade school I was a goody two shoes (whatever that means). One thing my mom taught me was from the Nancy Reagan school of response: Just say no to bullies & gang members and learn how to be your own best friend. So I can't relate to parents today saying they are worried about what their kids are getting up to since I was always predictably not getting UP to anything. You could usually just find me down by the little creek near our apartment, just hanging out by myself with the minnows and the chickadees. Thanks for the share Leah!
Smart insight re: the differences between peer pressure then and now. Had not thought of that. Here's some potential, somewhat related food for thought: it seems to me that "kids these days" talk (and care) a lot more about their so-called status at school and amongst their peers than I remember myself and my cohort doing. Maybe I was different or my social milieu was different though - I don't know. I'd like to know about other people's memories. But, if I'm right... then I think it would be fair to theorize that social media is driving this obsession with "status". And, it relates back to your point above about peer pressure and how it has changed.
I think this is right -- the status consciousness is a lot more vicious today, precisely because it involves competing in a much larger online pool. In a school of a few hundred kids, there just wasn't that much status to compete over.
Also, it's notable I think that with the rise of helicopter parenting, a lot of the concerns over 80s style peer pressure just faded away, only to be replaced by a much more worrisome form of online predation, harassment, bullying, and viral one-upmanship.
Cool post. You make some good points. Participation in a mediated community always involves some sort of threat to the tribe. For an oral culture, the book presents a threat to the tribe, for the individual can now have thoughts (and a vocabulary) outside the embodied, interpersonal community; the book is a transposition to the literate key, to use your language.
I would disagree with some of your comments regarding PSAs in schools. Bullying is bad, true. But PSAs in public schools that aggressively eulogize political trends of the day, especially with regards to identity politics/sexual matters, are not innocuous. People who have good reason to disagree with your take on sexuality should not be immediately demonized as bullies or proponents of "hate." This sort of easy moralism that so often passes for virtue in public school PSAs (not to mention corporate training sessions) tends to scapegoat dissenters and, perhaps ironically, lead to bullying. What could be more ironic than bullying the bully (and justifying yourself in the process)?
Parents have good reason to be concerned about where there kids go online, obviously. It is an abdication of parental responsibility to downplay the dangers of the Internet. On the other hand, there's a sort of nostalgic commonplace wherein people eulogize kids going outside and playing without parental supervision. It all depends on where you live. If you dwell near the 38th Parallel or The Tenderloin, and if you're a parent that has the slightest bit of sense, you're going to care where your kid plays.
I often think about how little my parents actually knew about my life as a teenager and shudder. But I mean, maybe all relationships require a certain level of wilful blindness in order to function?
I wonder about this. Somedays I think they must have just been shrugging and trusting that we'd make good decisions; other days I wonder how in the hell we were allowed to do some of the stuff we got up to.
Makes sense to me. Sadly.
Look forward to your piece on activism!!