Every time I see a teenager’s head down staring into a tiny screen, thumbs tapping away on a cell phone, I shiver just a tish. I can’t help but be haunted by a story I heard while at the Yahoo! Motherboard Summit last summer.
“If just one boy had hit delete my daughter might still be alive today.”
Like all of us who have been 15, she had a crush on a boy. I’m not sure what transpired, but somehow the neural misfires that define our teenage years, combined with easy handheld technology, roused this girl to send a compromising photo of herself to said crush. Couple that with more neural misfires, a teenage boy’s hormones on overdrive, a pinch of Big Man on Campus Syndrome, and you have a disastrous marriage of technology and teendom.
The boy didn’t hit delete.
Instead he forwarded her photo…and so on and so on and so on. Pretty soon practically the whole school had seen THE PHOTO that was meant for one boy’s eyes only. Back in the day if you showed a boy your boobs you were pretty sure no one else was going to see them, unless there was a lurker in the closet during Seven Minutes in Heaven. This young girl was understandably devastated, embarrassed, livid. She couldn’t find a way to cope. Her parents didn’t know so they couldn’t help. Sometimes it’s difficult to distinguish teenage angst from real pain. As our children grow, we are less in tune with their lives, and technology aids them in shutting us out even more. So swimming in pain, mired in shame, this young girl, someone’s beloved daughter, resorted to something that sends shivers up the spine of every parent.
She committed suicide.
Because no one hit delete.
I’m not squarely placing the blame on the boys here. As the mother of boys, I am sensitive to how society views their testosteroney stripes. Clearly there is more than enough blame and shame to go around. I ask myself “What was she thinking?! I would have never even considered taking a naked photo of myself.” Then again, back in my day that would have meant taking a roll of film to Rite Aid to be processed, and well, that would never have happened. “Texting,” much less “sexting” wasn’t in our vernacular then. The paradigm has changed. It’s all so damn easy now. Too easy. And it’s all so permanent. As for the boys, oh the boys. I remember lustful teenage boys. They are a twisted ball of hormones with one foot out the door and the other in their mouth. They are little boys in so many ways while struggling with becoming men. And the parents…how could they know? Teenagers are private, irrational, moody creatures. Anyway, the blame game has no winners in a case like this. It’s all so very complex.
I understand why teens need cell phones these days. I can think of a million ways a cell phone would have made our lives easier back in 1980-something. But I ask you this: Do teenagers need cell phones that are loaded with the proverbial bells and whistles? Do they need functionality beyond making a phone call and sending a simple text? Why do we equip our teens with smart phones when they’re not necessarily smart enough to use them responsibly? I wouldn’t buy my sons a revved up fast sports car when they turn 16, so why give them the handheld device that’s akin to a Porsche? It’s really a matter of maturity, not just book smarts. The young girl I mentioned was an honor student, an athlete, what everyone would have called a “good kid.”
We all made some pretty lousy decisions when we were teenagers, not because we weren’t bright or supported by a loving family; we made bad choices because we were teenagers. It’s a fact of life and a rite of passage. We all learned from those mistakes, and I’m not suggesting buffering our children’s poor choices to cushion their fall. There’s clearly much to be learned from failure. But understand that technology has made the stakes higher. We must teach our children how to be responsible on a whole new level. We are raising digital citizens. When it comes to the long term effects of violence, bullying, harassment, threats, suicide, we must take note. Why not keep those teens in our protective mommy pouches for just a bit longer if we can? Why isn’t it enough to give them cell phones equipped with just the basics? They get the functionality and peace of mind without the million and one what-ifs. Temptation will lurk in other places, and Stupidity won’t be far behind.
Our eager, naive, misguided youth reeked of the same insecurities teens face today. But as the cliche goes, times they are a changin’. Technology, literally in the palm of their hand, has changed the course of maturity. The instant ease with which we can share photos, videos, messages, even the ones we think are private, has granted a dangerous freedom and fueled the degeneration of privacy. The perceived invincibility of teenagerhood doesn’t need to be fueled. It’s scary enough without technology. It’s amazing we all came out of those years in tact and for the most part, unscathed. The scars are still vivid enough to make me shudder thinking about raising two teenage boys. I’m dreading how out of touch I will be (both in their perception and in reality). All Mac Daddy and I can do is raise them with the values we want them to carry into their every action. We can be parents who participate in their children’s lives. We can demonstrate unconditional love. We can be responsible with in own digital lives. We can exercise parental controls. We can be informed so that we can educate. We can know and set limits. We too can unplug in order to rejuvenate. We can be their parents, not their friends.
My goal is to raise Bird and Deal to be the kind of boys who hit delete.
Check out these resources from Yahoo! Safely to help you navigate the exciting, imaginative online world. You can’t start too early and you can’t be too vigilant.
Information for teens to navigate the web safely
The larger question perhaps is, do teenagers need cell phones at all? True, social technologies offer all of us some measure of convenience, exploration, and escape that we didn’t have back then. However, social media is a cheap substitution for effective communication between two interlocutors in any dyadic event, even worse if the number of participants increase. If the girl above had been face-to-face with that guy, do you think she would have had more non-verbal information accompanying the verbal and a better chance at making a less riskier decision? I’d say, yes, even if she intended to show off her pride and joys.
Teens are largely immature in their communication skills, negotiation of communicative and regulative rules, so ambiguity is pervasive in their interpersonal lives. Perhaps they are attempting to make sense of their world by using what is readily accessible to them, and in doing so circumvent the opportunities that will hone their communication skills by substituting them with skills that are nothing more than performance based, such as pushing mini-buttons and sending quick pics. The immediacy of their social networks creates a power within, to control the “conversation” by manipulating how and when one will send or receive messages–or not. Immediacy circumvents the personal relationship because it’s fast, easy, and you don’t have to face the other person. Kids are becoming experts at manipulating time and space, and lousy at initiating casual conversations.
Teens are not the only ones to blame. Read Sherry Turkle’s, Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology And Less From Each Other (2011).
You raise several interesting points, and a good metaphor about phones and revved up sports cars.
gm
I agree that in many ways the device is the real place to focus. I recently went in a friendly back and forth with someone who proclaimed proudly that her teen and her 7yo both did not have cell phones and no one needs them since we didn’t have them as children. But we did have payphones as children. I always was never far from a pay phone and my parents made sure i always had a few quarters to call if i was running late etc. In suburbia any child who spends even half the amount of time away from their parents as i did at the same age needs a cell phone as well.
My 13yo has a cell. She’s had it a few years. it was a basic hand-me-down nokia that didn’t have a camera, wasn’t web enabled and didn’t have any off the extras. its purpose is to make calls. She’s gone to dances where some of the smartphone enabled kids spend the entire time texting. The others are out playing tag and giggling and gasp talking.
You are right no child needs a fancy phone but they do need a phone.
Well said Ilina! Not that long ago a girl at my alma mater attempted suicide and now is in a nursing home after being bullied via text messages/emails. I think in the month leading up to her attempt she had +3,000 messages! http://www.ktvu.com/news/23599627/detail.html
I agree with Gregory in questioning whether kids *really* need a cell phone, and not because I didn’t have one. My mother is a secretary at a middle school and probably has a story a day that would agree with the theory of writer behind Freerange Kids (cell phones = less self reliance), http://www.creators.com/opinion/lenore-skenazy/cell-phone-holdouts-are-right-buy-a-phone-become-a-baby.html.
Although, part of my agrees with Kia – we were always able to use a pay phone to call home. Now even finding a pay phone would be a challenge and one that worked – even more difficult. As I was driving to the airport last week, I noticed that the signs signaling services at rest stops/service stations, the phone symbol was crossed off! If any place needs a pay phone, it would be a highway gas station!