November 6, 2018
By Elizabeth Zhang
Are we “millenials” and “young’uns” on our phones too much? Is our tech obsession making us antisocial, depressed and a whole lot dumber? There have been hundreds of studies conducted to test whether or not technology is ruining the younger generations, and most of the older folks I talk to seem to think it is.
I’m personally a grandmother in the body of a 16-year-old, mind you, so I’m not the most tech-savvy teen in the world. The only social media accounts I have are my email addresses and Facebook (and as far as Facebook knows, I’m a 55 year old man). So, what really gets to me is when adults (ahem, teachers) simply assume that every student has Snapchat, Instagram and/or Twitter and that we all spend countless hours doing whatever on those, apps? Websites? See, I don’t even know how to use them or what you really do on them.
To adults making universalizing claims about the effects of social media on young people, I have to respectfully disagree. I guarantee you that there are plenty of young people like me who either don’t have social media accounts or don’t care about them.
But, fellow teenagers, we do have to consider the world from their perspectives too. If all you do in class is go on your phone, won’t that make teachers think that you’re so addicted that you just can’t put it down? Yeah, maybe you’re just bored, but would it really be that hard to wait 20 minutes until the bell rings, and then scroll through those posts?
If we don’t pay attention in class, we might not pay attention to the people and events around us. But this is all double sided: Yes, technology and social media may distance us from the people who are close, but it moves us closer to the people who are distant.
When it comes to creating accounts for different social media sites, there are two approaches —pouring basically all your personal information on sites (birthday, age, where you live, where you go to school, etc.) or going incognito (like me, a 55 year old man). A lot of weird, creepy people take advantage of the internet. We need to be careful about how much information we put online, who we follow, and how we present ourselves. No matter how invincible you feel, we are all vulnerable online. We should always take caution before we let strangers from the internet into our lives and we should pause before we believe what people say online.
To all the young people reading this, I hope you all strive to be tactful, careful, and creative with your use of social media. And to all the oldsters reading this - yes, the times they are a changin’ (Ha! And you thought we didn’t know Bob Dylan). Just like the printing press, electricity, and the telegraph, social media has novel and terrifying ways to shrink the world. But just like those innovations were here to stay, so is social media. We have to recognize that our fear and distrust is futile, leaving the question: Where do we go from here?
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