The Youth Are Starting to Change

In an age dominated by digital communications today’s teens are slowly losing the ability to connect with their real-world peers. What will come because of that loss? Teens are, no doubt, one of the first demographics to pick up on new technologies, and the one that has stuck the longest has been the internet. The youth of today live in the future of yesterday. Where getting in touch with anyone can be done from anywhere. With the ability to have an immediate connection at the tip of the fingers, everyday organic interactions are becoming blander. Instead of waiting to be fulfilled, adolescents are becoming reactionary beings with little to no sense of what it means to be human. Constant digital communication is causing an alarming disconnect between teens, by eliminating the need for person-to-person interaction in favor of its digital successor.

Instead of talking with close friends teens now post their feelings on the internet where anyone can see them. Children going through adolescent changes have always relied on the network of people around them to help them with what they are feeling and going through. They may be experiencing hard personal times, or they may just want someone to tell them that they are worth something. But today some teens have resorted to posting their inner feelings online for anyone to see, instead of finding a close friend who they can talk with, in hopes that someone will come along to assist them in their journey of maturity. That might work in theory, but in the case of 14-year-old Hannah Smith, that theory doesn’t always work in practice. Hannah Smith was going through a time of stress, and anxiety, so she turned to popular social networking site Ask.fm. It was there that she posted her feelings online with the opportunity for anonymous posters to respond to her, and with the ability to post anonymously anything can happen. According to Chandra Johnson, “The responses came in rapid succession. Anonymous posters urged Smith to cut herself and drink bleach. One even said, “Do us all a favor n kill ourselves”. This eventually did lead to Hannah committing suicide, and her family demanding action from the website. The police became involved, and their detectives found out something shocking about the source of the comments. The comments were coming from Hannah herself. She was “hoping her friends would rally in her defense”. Even with the ability to get help from friends, Hannah went to the internet where she would attack her own character and isolate herself even further. The internet is, every day, making it harder for teens to find, and stay with, a reliable group of friends that have their best interest in mind. This is leading to a self-denial of community.

Because of the internet’s quick integration into the lives of teenagers, many of them no longer experience the community they have around them. One such community is the urban community. Many people are always traversing the urban environment sharing snippets of humanity wherever they go, but teens stuck in the digital environment are missing those snippets. With their faces turned down, or their minds on a conversation that doesn’t exist right there with them. They are becoming creatures of dual environments. Paul Goldberger says, “When you walk along the street and talk on a cell phone, you are not on the street sharing the communal experience of urban life”. Lillian Ross uses the term, for her memoir titled, “Here But Not Here”. With so many teens favoring their online environment over the one they live in they are rejecting something as old as humanity; community. The community is something humans are born into, but it is something that one has to pay attention to if they are to realize it’s there. But cell phones with their direct link to the online world are becoming an obstruction to the younger members of the community. Without being aware of whom they are walking past when they are out in the world teens are losing the opportunity to connect with another person they have in front of them.

Teens unable to pay attention to what they have right in front of them are a morbid thought. If they are unable to pay attention to people, themselves, and the world around them, what will happen to them when they grow into adults? Teens of today bear fewer and fewer resemblances to those of the past. If they never have to leave their house to get the connection of another person they won’t be learning to talk and connect in the same way that their parents did. “FACE-TO-FACE conversation unfolds slowly. It teaches us patience”. Patience to talk with another person is important because, “We use conversation with others to learn to converse with ourselves”. Having a face-to-face conversation is something of a dying art form. Teens no longer have to focus on one conversation. They can now talk to lots of different people all at one, but that isn’t as great as it sounds. Texting can be done anytime without ever having to fully think about what is going on in the conversation, and if teens can’t focus on simple text conversations with their peers, how will they be able to focus on conversations with themselves? Without the ability to converse with ourselves we lose the important ability of self-reflection. Without that ability, they will not be able to reflect on how they are growing up and how the world is growing around them. Howard Rheingold asks an important question, “What kind of person am I becoming as a result of all of this stuff?”. This is a question that should always be sitting in the back of teens’ minds. The internet has been a driving force of good for the world, but it has also been doing harm to the youths who live in the world. It has been making it harder for them to connect with their peers in time of need, it has begun to erode away at the natural community that they are born into, and it has stunted how they think about themselves and the growth of society.

The youths of today need to start paying attention to what will become of them, their peers and the world around them. With many teens escaping the real world for the digital one they are willfully rejecting what is happening right in front of them. What is to become of teens, when they inevitably grow up into adults, who every day ignore their peers, their communities, themselves, and the world?