Do not let adults steal this generation from you: Seeing both sides

On tumblr, I follow a bunch of different blogs.  I try to primarily follow people who are posting their own original content, but I also follow some people (primarily young people, or at least people younger than me) who reblog tons of things relating to life as a teen or young adult. Working with people that age every day makes me particularly interested in and appreciative of their world view.  I won't pretend that I always share it, but I do often enough that I reblog or favourite their posts fairly regularly.

Recently, the post below captured my attention; for some reason I couldn't stop thinking about it.

xcxcxbx:

fleurbot:

Do not let adults steal this generation from you. Relish in selfies. Snapchat pictures of coffee to your friends, huddle around an iphone to watch Vines. Shamelessly love this generations commodities, like how your parents loved THEIR commodities, like disco or Hammer Pants or whatever else. Do not let angry adults take away your chance to experience the uniqueness of right now.

Just ignore any typos and the misuse of 'relish' and focus on the idea here because there are some really important things going on.

In my school, which until recently was very open to technology, there has been a profound shift in attitude.  Technology is being demonized as the cause of attention issues, lack of sleep, behaviour problems, inappropriate peer relationships...you name the problem and a parent, teacher, or administrator will bring up the pernicious effects of technology use.  This has been filtering down to students in many different forms.  In various classes, teachers present articles and lead discussions about the damaging effects of tech use.  Concerned parents pressure the school to present parent workshops about digital dangers.  Whole wellness class sessions are directed towards eliminating or 'managing' the digital distractions in young people's lives.  

Perhaps most noticeable is the general tone of disdain directed towards the way young people use digital media.  Selfies, status updates, ask.fm, snapchats...they are all fair game as topics of wry humour.  Though many - if not most - of the adults I know use similar media on a regular basis, they speak disparagingly amongst themselves and with a deprecating humour in class about things like the narcissistic qualities they perceive in the way young people use digital media.  If a statistic comes out about how many selfies are taken by the average teenager in a given day, odds are it will gain traction among some teachers and be mentioned in class.  

It was inevitable that young people would get fed up with this constant onslaught of criticism of the ways in which they express themselves.  If I were a 14 year old selfie-poster, I'd be pretty sick of the delight some adults seem to take in disparaging the media I use and consume on a regular basis.  

That's not to say I agree with fleurbot and xcxcxbx about 'adults stealing their generation', but I do understand the sentiment.  As educators we (some of us?) have realized that the tactic of telling kids how bad drugs are for them isn't likely to get all of them to just say no. The whole 'this is your brain on drugs' thing is kind of a joke these days.  Nevertheless today we trot out images of MRIs and tell kids that these little light patches show that your brain is getting some kind of dopamine hit from checking your facebook status.  As if that little light patch symbolized a future of deranged social media obsession.  

There is another side, of course.  I see people (friends and students, not just students) who view every place - from a work of art to the Anne Frank house - as the perfect backdrop for a picture of themselves.  Forget the issue of ego, it takes people out of the moment.  If you're figuring out the right pose for the right photo with the right caption, how do you appreciate the place/time?  How do you look around you and fully immerse yourself in whatever it is that prompted you to stop and capture the image in the first place?  

I see the death of conversation and laughter as people (young, old, and in between) compulsively checking social media feeds for updates on where, what, who, and when.  People who chose to go out together,  allegedly for fun, who don't engage with each other because they are keeping an eye on what's going on elsewhere.  

I see parents (some of whom are also teachers) ignoring their families in order to 'check one more thing'.

I'll stop there because what I'm talking about is not new.  

What I'll come back to, however, is that the media aren't going away because, really, almost no one wants them to.  Mocking them to our students is going to lead, at best, to deaf ears and at worst to a giant 'SHUT UP, ALREADY' from the people who we want to use media better.  Better than we do if we're being honest.

Instead of preaching and harping on what's wrong with digital media usage, maybe it's time we started a conversation about using it better.  Maybe the first step is seeing both sides.