Generation Techs

Who out there had a Princess telephone in your bedroom? How long were you allowed to talk on it per day? Did you have to share it with your sister? And how about you guys - did you talk on the phone for hours?

Enter the technological age in which teens have cell phones, IM, iPODs, text messaging, Blackberries and beyond, and the MySpace and Facebook Chrissie wrote about a few posts back. While you were allowed to talk on the phone for an hour, today's teens spend an estimated 6 hours per day engaged in technological correspondence of some kind. As you have probably noticed and any teacher can tell you, it's hard to separate a teen from his phone.

All this phonage seems to be making us superficial and self-absorbed. Notice the IM, iPOD - the big "I" pervades all this personal technology. "I want it now, I am going to use it now, and I don't care what you say," is the teen's silent, but blatant mantra.

Is all this teen technology really beneficial? According to a CBS News report at the start of this school year, there is a possibility that it is not. Here is a quote from that article:

"Teenagers have a biological need to separate (from their parents), and online there's a perception of invisibility from parents, removing the fear that their actions will be detected," says Nancy Willard, executive director of Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use. "The disconnect between actions and consequences play against each other with teens."

Ironically, if teens have a biological need to separate from their parents, cell phones now provide instant access, even during school hours. It is so common for a student to say, "Hey, my mom is calling me, can I answer it?" It's like a long distance umbilical cord!!

The big hello though is the last line - the disconnect teens are now experiencing between their actions and consequences. Nowhere is that more obvious than in a public school. Part of the six hours a day a teen spends messaging or talking on the cell are at school. They have even become so adept at concealing it as to be able to text message someone virtually from their pocket without looking at the phone!!

What a paradox to be so connected, yet disconnected at the same time. As innocuous as it may seem, this disconnect between teen actions and consequences is a problem society has only begun to realize.

In the first place, it exacerbates amoral teen behavior. For example, I'm thinking of the story I was told about Oklahoma high schoolers who had a lingerie party at their friend's house, took pictures of themselves in said lingerie with their host's Dad, a public official, then posted them on their MySpace, refusing to remove them, even though their good friend's father asked them to (ok, maybe that dad should have seen that coming, but it does also raise moral and legal issues regarding what rights we have with our identity on the Internet - a problem teens have had with Facebook and MySpace). Also, just keeping the stupid thing put away during class (or a movie, while driving, during dinner, at work...) is a challenge of will and determination many teens lose.

The other is the superficiality and lacking depth of knowledge that this multitasking is causing. If the average American attention span was short before, it is almost non-existent now among the members of our younger generation. It used to be the only distraction was daydreaming - now it is a constant barrage of incoming text messages and constant tuning out with the iPOD. It gives the old "turn on, tune in, drop out" motto a whole new meaning. An up note is that now teens and adults alike can self-medicate with electronics, rather than drugs!

Of course, the Druides of the ancient Gauls forbade their students to use writing, as it might impair their memory. Gutenburg's printing press scared alot of people in the Renaissance. Any new technology is threatening. It will take a few years, maybe decades, to develop rules governing the polite and proper use of technological devices.

In order to beat them, this time we are going to have to join them. There's no turning back now in this brave new world. The medium's the message. Oops, gotta go - my cell phone's ringing...