The Generation of Tomorrow
My closest RL friend has just given birth to a baby boy and, less than an hour old, the kiddo already has pictures up on Facebook. (Congrats to kiddo's mom and dad!)
It just occurred to me that 15-20 years from now, when kiddo's dating-- the whole "share embarrassing baby pictures to your potential significant other" is going to take on a ( Read more... )
It just occurred to me that 15-20 years from now, when kiddo's dating-- the whole "share embarrassing baby pictures to your potential significant other" is going to take on a ( Read more... )
I've googled every single guy I've ever dated. What? It's a good way to gather information! I fail to see how this is weird.
My mom is the opposite of most "techno-challenged" parents. She Twitters and I don't. She even has a Facebook (which is actually more common that you think, at least here in the US) and yes, we are Facebook friends. I think the 2nd-most abundant age on Facebook after the techno-tweens is the "Over 60" crowd. In the US, as programming for seniors gets cut due to budget constraints, more and more older adults turn to social networking to keep in touch with friends and family. It's a really interesting social phenomenon.
As for technology and parenting, well, the really really easy solution is don't give your kids a laptop or a cellphone. I'm a child of technology and yet I still fail to see why kids need more than a centralized desktop in the home. And I'm sorry, but kids don't need their own cellphones, especially at the ages of 12-13-14. Don't even get me started on X-Box Live (NO).
Congrats to your friend on her new baby! Maybe by the time they're 20 we'll have the flying cars and the personal rocket-packs. Here's to the future! ;)
ETA: !!! I think what boggles my mind the most is that, growing up, if I didn't know something I was told to look it up in the encyclepedia. Now, if someone tells me they don't know something, I tell them to Google it. THAT'S WEIRD. O.o
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...now that you've mentioned it, I've done this, too. :P (And maybe freaked out my ex at knowing his 'secret' before he could tell me.) Except it may not have been Google. I think it was Yahoo. And I think there's potentially more information out there on people now than it was when I did it (ten years ago).
My parents are on opposite ends of the spectrum. My mom just got her first Facebook account, but my dad's the super computer guru and knew more about computers and the Internet than most teen geeks in my youth until he finally decided it'd be easier to off-load the task to me :P and now he just asks me stuff I know he can figure out on his own, except he's lazy. He's also into those real time strategy text-based games that's such a fad now.
But I agree with you on your solution! I'm thinking, "your own cellphone/desktop as a preteen, are you mad?" But I can't help but wonder if it's the same deal with us when we were preteens. I think it was your own phone line when I was a preteen/teenager. Not that I got one (I was on the computer and a modem, heh heh), but everyone else I knew seemed to have one.
*thinks she wants to raise her kids on a farm a la Pioneer Woman*
Man... telling one's child to Google it instead of look it up in the encyclopedia / dictionary is weird!
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I think technology is awesome, but I also think we have the responsibility to teach our children that they don't have to be wired in all the time (hold your wireless jokes, please). ;)
My dad is, for all intents and purposes, computer illiterate. He knows enough to check MSN (cuz it's the homepage) and to play Hearts. If I tell him to google something he looks at me like I said a dirty word. I think he finally got an email maybe three motnhs ago...and that was only to get river updates from the DNR. My grandmother doesn't have a computer, never learned to use one, and has no desire to get one. Do you know how refreshing it is to walk into her house and know that there's no compy, no internet cloud hovering, no white noise of monitor buzzing in the background?
There is a real world out there! More real than World of Warcrack, I promise! ;)
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