The other day I was having a conversation with my 13 year old who has recently become interested in girls.
He mentioned a girl he wanted to ask for a coffee date or a movie. Then he found out from his friends that she does not have a cell phone and this would be a problem. “Mom,” he said, “I can’t text her, she does not have a cell phone.” So I said why don’t you call her at home. He looked at me as if I was crazy. “I can’t do that. If I can’t text her, I can’t ask her out.”
This seems a little strange to me. I am from a generation that boys asked us out by calling us on the phone. There was no email, no facebook and no texting.
But this generation of kids is different, aren’t they.
They text incessantly. They post gatherings and party announcements on facebook. They email each other daily.
Around the dinner table these past few months, we talk about how often they use their phones and the importance of talking with people in real time. My concern is the way our kids are learning to communicate with their peers. Relationships and friendships cannot be built on sayings, text lingo and abbreviations.
As a mom interviewed in Washington Post says, What will this generation learn and what will they lose in the relentless stream of sentence fragments, abbreviations and emoticons? “Life’s issues are not always settled in sound bites,” Pam says.
Tech Blogger Susan Getgood had a good point about kids being kids in her recent column on BlogHer, about teenagers and “sexting”;
“Today’s teens are not so lucky. They’ve got tools like Facebook and cell phones that let them be stupider that we could ever have imagined. They can do the stupid stuff and document it, all at the same time. It makes me wonder if the 21st century Keymaster won’t be collecting just keys at the senior party, but also cell phones.”
They spend a significant amount of time on facebook too. We discuss using appropriate language and using their heads. I am vigilante in checking their accounts and their emails. I think we have to be on top of these issues as parents. We need to know what’s going on in our kid’s lives. We talk to our kids about facebook and how permanent it is. Everything our kids post is out there forever. I am not sure too many of our kids understand that concept.
Will the kids of our generation ever learn to use a land line? Do my own kids even know we have a land line or the definition?
I don’t think my son knows the home phone number at our house. He might know my cell phone number but when he wants or needs something from me, (which seems to be the only thing I am good for these days) he texts me.
“Please pick me up.”
“Can I have friends over.”
“What is for dinner?”
I have another son who is starting to text also and interacting with his peers in the same manner.
The Ny Times reports that excessive texting is an epidemic in our country.
Spurred by the unlimited texting plans offered by carriers like AT&T Mobility and Verizon Wireless, American teenagers sent and received an average of 2,272 text messages per month in the fourth quarter of 2008, according to the Nielsen Company — almost 80 messages a day, more than double the average of a year earlier.
I will continue to talk about the importance of interacting with their peers face to face and stress that there are many ways to have conversations with real live humans.
What else is there in life, if we don’t have our daily live interactions with people?
Kim Gellman is the owner of Artisticsensations.com, a fun and hip website that sells kids furniture,bedding, and room decor from baby to college age kids. She is the mother of two boys and enjoys every moment of life and all its adventures!
