There is a very insightful article on New York Magazine on a very important impact the social media has created. Parents often have romantic ideas of providing their kids an ideal innocent dream childhood. One that closely resembles their own, except the time has cleaned away any bad memories and painted everything in washed tones of color. The world however has moved on and taken a great leap with the internet. What parents do not get is that the kids dig it and define a world that is radically different to the one they grew up in.

“Whenever young people are allowed to indulge in something old people are not allowed to, it makes us bitter. What did we have? The mall and the parking lot of the 7-Eleven? It sucked to grow up when we did! And we’re mad about it now.”

It’s the end of privacy as we adults define it. We debate how we can control the new world and protect children. The real question is whether this cultural change can really be affected to begin with. Most adults are complete outsiders to it. The truth is that the control adults desire was lost long time ago. Adults should learn how to participate, be present and engage kids in our new world. Adults have to adapt to how the younger generation communicates.

We are in a dire need of social media that is useful and meaningful across the age spectrum.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 13th, 2007 at 8:35 and is filed under Media, On the web. . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.