The lag time between your peergroup and others.
The title was initially something along the lines of "The lag time between kids and parents". I realized that that didn't really address what I wanted to say, but only exemplifies it. by now I'd be surprised if you hadn't heard of sexting. Any time a phenomenon like this happens, there's always a lot of public outcry and "How could this happen!?" What's more interesting to me though, is how long it's probably taken for parents, school-officials, law-makers, and others to become aware of this kind of practice.
Today I was looking at my a news feed and NPR had a story about a texting-while-driving prevention video from Wales, and I thought "Really? It's taken you this long? I saw this two weeks ago!" I was mildly disappointed at NPR's ability to report things as they're happening. NPR suddenly seemed like a bunch of old fogeys who didn't know where they put their glasses.
It hit me then that this isn't about being "In the know", it's about your peer group, and who you associate with. I didn't know about sexting until I heard about it in the news. Before it was on the news it was being addressed by School officials, before that - parents, Before parents the Kids who knew kids that were doing it knew about it. and then finally we get to the source. People who are actually doing this. I was way too removed from this situation to know about it any other way. I was the old fogey.
In the modern world, this game of catch up depends on information access. I knew about the texting-while-driving video a couple of weeks before NPR, but that's because I have different sources of information I pay attention to. In some cases, the information isn't accessible until something throws a wrench in the system, ie: some young girl has pictures floating around online and the world wakes up to a shocking reality.
I think when you're young, you look around at the world and wonder why people don't get it. It's so obvious, it's so immediate that it's impossible to miss. What we don't realize is that we're just as limited, but we don't see it because as kids/teens we're pretty self-absorbed.
Today I was looking at my a news feed and NPR had a story about a texting-while-driving prevention video from Wales, and I thought "Really? It's taken you this long? I saw this two weeks ago!" I was mildly disappointed at NPR's ability to report things as they're happening. NPR suddenly seemed like a bunch of old fogeys who didn't know where they put their glasses.
It hit me then that this isn't about being "In the know", it's about your peer group, and who you associate with. I didn't know about sexting until I heard about it in the news. Before it was on the news it was being addressed by School officials, before that - parents, Before parents the Kids who knew kids that were doing it knew about it. and then finally we get to the source. People who are actually doing this. I was way too removed from this situation to know about it any other way. I was the old fogey.
In the modern world, this game of catch up depends on information access. I knew about the texting-while-driving video a couple of weeks before NPR, but that's because I have different sources of information I pay attention to. In some cases, the information isn't accessible until something throws a wrench in the system, ie: some young girl has pictures floating around online and the world wakes up to a shocking reality.
I think when you're young, you look around at the world and wonder why people don't get it. It's so obvious, it's so immediate that it's impossible to miss. What we don't realize is that we're just as limited, but we don't see it because as kids/teens we're pretty self-absorbed.