Connected and cut off
It's a modern quandary for adults: Technology keeps teens in touch with one another - and their parents totally in the dark.
By Jeff Gammage
Philadelphia Inquirer 2/21/2006
Back in the Stone Age, that is, the 1990s, if a young man wanted to date a young woman, he had to work through her parents: Call the house, be polite when mom or dad answered the phone, make small talk when he arrived at their door.
No more.
These days, technology is excising parents from the equation - and they don't like it a bit.
Today the interaction is more often conducted teen to teen via cell phone, text messaging, and instant messaging. That makes it harder for parents to know who their kids are spending time with - not just as dates, but as friends.
"He's telling me he doesn't have to go through the parents, when he has such easy access through the phone," says Lawrenceville, N.J., mother Vicki Russo, whose 13-year-old son, Max, is beginning to discover the opposite sex. "I say, 'It's out of respect, so they know who their daughter is seeing.'
"I am definitely considered a dinosaur."
Of course, teenagers have talked on the phone for as long as there have been phones and teenagers. And there have always been kids with private lines in their bedrooms. What's changed is that the technology of personal communication has become relatively cheap, infinitely varied and nearly universal.
"Gone are the days when parents can at least hear the voices, if not see the faces, of the company our kids keep," says Jenifer Lippincott, a Boston-area learning consultant and coauthor of 7 Things Your Teenager Won't Tell You (And How to Talk About Them Anyway).
Instant messaging can seem futuristic to people who communicated by passing notes in class. But to teens, Lippincott says, IMs have become an everyday means of conversation, the way to find out the details of a breakup, the location of a party, the plans for Friday night.
Max Russo "can't go over to anybody's house unless I know where he's going," his mother says, "but he knows a ton of kids who I don't know, because they're IMing each other. I define the relationship as, 'Your friends are people who come here.' He defines it as people he IMs."
•
To parents it can sometimes seem that their teenagers already know the kind of people they want to be: grouchy, easily offended loners.
To the kids, adolescence is a time of baffling transformation - hormones raging, voices changing, hairs sprouting. They are trying on different beliefs and attitudes, figuring out what they think about the world and their place in it.
The fact is, adolescence is difficult for everyone involved. It's a time when teens want more independence - but not full responsibility. When they want to be appreciated as individuals - but still belong to the group. They want to make their own decisions - but need parental backup if things go wrong.
Layered atop that turbulence are technological advances that give kids real power to assert their independence. Mom and Dad may insist on keeping the family computer in the living room, but a text-messaging conversation can be conducted anytime from anywhere through a cell phone.
And understanding the technology doesn't necessarily help parents. Karen Levy is a recruiting manager for an information-technology firm, and her husband, Laurent, is a veteran IT consultant. Still, she says, they found out only after the fact that their 18-year-old daughter had driven to a date with a young man they didn't know.
"I never even met this guy," says the Yardley mother. "I expected him to pick her up... . I was pretty upset about it."
Many parents also say they're puzzled by the all-consuming attraction of instant messaging. Their kids rush through the door after school, drop their books on a counter and log on - sending instant messages to the same kids they saw half an hour ago.
"My daughter, who never talked to boys, is constantly IMing boys," says Helene Dubin, a Lawrenceville, N.J., nutritionist.
But there are good reasons why teens prefer to communicate online. To understand, you need to talk to an expert. Somebody like Randy Schur. He just turned 15.
•
In the old days, the act of calling a girl on the phone required a certain bravery, because it was so revealing.
The moment she picked up the line, she knew why you were calling: You were interested in her. You wouldn't have phoned if you weren't.
Today, instant messaging offers a much more casual means of contact, all but erasing the threat of rejection.
"They know why you're talking, but you can always 'just be talking,' " says Schur, a student at Haverford High School. "On IM, you could just be bored, so you picked someone to talk to. Calling someone is really deliberate. It's a lot more personal."
Instant messages also offer greater privacy, he adds, because conversations take place in a kind of shorthand computerese, unintelligible to the uninitiated.
"Some people never write an entire word," Schur says. "Some write only in abbreviations."
For instance, "A3" means anytime, anyplace, anywhere. "YBS" means you'll be sorry and "PMBI" translates as pardon my butting in. No teen could survive without dashing off an occasional "POS," alerting their friends that there is a parent over shoulder.
Researchers who study adolescence say young people are more at ease discussing emotions and attractions online. Text offers distance and separation, eliminating the risk of embarrassment or awkwardness in a face-to-face conversation, says Cheryl Dellasega, professor of women's studies at Pennsylvania State University and author of Surviving Ophelia: Mothers Share Their Wisdom in Navigating the Tumultuous Teenage Years.
But texting presents quandaries, too. Schur, a musician active in high school bands, says the advantage of instant messaging is also its disadvantage: It's impersonal.
"There's no body language," he says. "There's not even how your voice is."
Which led him to this insight:
"If you want a girl to like you, you probably should talk to them."
•
Today the Internet is used by 17 million youths ages 12 through 17 - fully 73 percent of all those in the age bracket, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project. And two-thirds of American teens communicate through instant messaging. It has replaced the cell phone as their preferred mode of connecting with friends, according to a new study in Reading Research Quarterly.
Not surprising, says Trish McDermott, chief matchmaker at www.engage.com, a dating Web site. Practically every technical innovation has been used to enhance contact between the sexes. The invention of the railroad meant people could date outside of their immediate surroundings, the car created intimate backseat romances, the telephone made it possible to reach out and touch someone.
Heck, she says, in the 1800s, telegraph operators used to flirt through dots and dashes. Today's youths are using what's available to them.
"The computer is the way he's in touch with his friends," says Ann Ellen Dickter, Randy Schur's mom. "They pick up a computer the way we might have picked up the phone."
By Jeff Gammage
Philadelphia Inquirer 2/21/2006
Back in the Stone Age, that is, the 1990s, if a young man wanted to date a young woman, he had to work through her parents: Call the house, be polite when mom or dad answered the phone, make small talk when he arrived at their door.
No more.
These days, technology is excising parents from the equation - and they don't like it a bit.
Today the interaction is more often conducted teen to teen via cell phone, text messaging, and instant messaging. That makes it harder for parents to know who their kids are spending time with - not just as dates, but as friends.
"He's telling me he doesn't have to go through the parents, when he has such easy access through the phone," says Lawrenceville, N.J., mother Vicki Russo, whose 13-year-old son, Max, is beginning to discover the opposite sex. "I say, 'It's out of respect, so they know who their daughter is seeing.'
"I am definitely considered a dinosaur."
Of course, teenagers have talked on the phone for as long as there have been phones and teenagers. And there have always been kids with private lines in their bedrooms. What's changed is that the technology of personal communication has become relatively cheap, infinitely varied and nearly universal.
"Gone are the days when parents can at least hear the voices, if not see the faces, of the company our kids keep," says Jenifer Lippincott, a Boston-area learning consultant and coauthor of 7 Things Your Teenager Won't Tell You (And How to Talk About Them Anyway).
Instant messaging can seem futuristic to people who communicated by passing notes in class. But to teens, Lippincott says, IMs have become an everyday means of conversation, the way to find out the details of a breakup, the location of a party, the plans for Friday night.
Max Russo "can't go over to anybody's house unless I know where he's going," his mother says, "but he knows a ton of kids who I don't know, because they're IMing each other. I define the relationship as, 'Your friends are people who come here.' He defines it as people he IMs."
•
To parents it can sometimes seem that their teenagers already know the kind of people they want to be: grouchy, easily offended loners.
To the kids, adolescence is a time of baffling transformation - hormones raging, voices changing, hairs sprouting. They are trying on different beliefs and attitudes, figuring out what they think about the world and their place in it.
The fact is, adolescence is difficult for everyone involved. It's a time when teens want more independence - but not full responsibility. When they want to be appreciated as individuals - but still belong to the group. They want to make their own decisions - but need parental backup if things go wrong.
Layered atop that turbulence are technological advances that give kids real power to assert their independence. Mom and Dad may insist on keeping the family computer in the living room, but a text-messaging conversation can be conducted anytime from anywhere through a cell phone.
And understanding the technology doesn't necessarily help parents. Karen Levy is a recruiting manager for an information-technology firm, and her husband, Laurent, is a veteran IT consultant. Still, she says, they found out only after the fact that their 18-year-old daughter had driven to a date with a young man they didn't know.
"I never even met this guy," says the Yardley mother. "I expected him to pick her up... . I was pretty upset about it."
Many parents also say they're puzzled by the all-consuming attraction of instant messaging. Their kids rush through the door after school, drop their books on a counter and log on - sending instant messages to the same kids they saw half an hour ago.
"My daughter, who never talked to boys, is constantly IMing boys," says Helene Dubin, a Lawrenceville, N.J., nutritionist.
But there are good reasons why teens prefer to communicate online. To understand, you need to talk to an expert. Somebody like Randy Schur. He just turned 15.
•
In the old days, the act of calling a girl on the phone required a certain bravery, because it was so revealing.
The moment she picked up the line, she knew why you were calling: You were interested in her. You wouldn't have phoned if you weren't.
Today, instant messaging offers a much more casual means of contact, all but erasing the threat of rejection.
"They know why you're talking, but you can always 'just be talking,' " says Schur, a student at Haverford High School. "On IM, you could just be bored, so you picked someone to talk to. Calling someone is really deliberate. It's a lot more personal."
Instant messages also offer greater privacy, he adds, because conversations take place in a kind of shorthand computerese, unintelligible to the uninitiated.
"Some people never write an entire word," Schur says. "Some write only in abbreviations."
For instance, "A3" means anytime, anyplace, anywhere. "YBS" means you'll be sorry and "PMBI" translates as pardon my butting in. No teen could survive without dashing off an occasional "POS," alerting their friends that there is a parent over shoulder.
Researchers who study adolescence say young people are more at ease discussing emotions and attractions online. Text offers distance and separation, eliminating the risk of embarrassment or awkwardness in a face-to-face conversation, says Cheryl Dellasega, professor of women's studies at Pennsylvania State University and author of Surviving Ophelia: Mothers Share Their Wisdom in Navigating the Tumultuous Teenage Years.
But texting presents quandaries, too. Schur, a musician active in high school bands, says the advantage of instant messaging is also its disadvantage: It's impersonal.
"There's no body language," he says. "There's not even how your voice is."
Which led him to this insight:
"If you want a girl to like you, you probably should talk to them."
•
Today the Internet is used by 17 million youths ages 12 through 17 - fully 73 percent of all those in the age bracket, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project. And two-thirds of American teens communicate through instant messaging. It has replaced the cell phone as their preferred mode of connecting with friends, according to a new study in Reading Research Quarterly.
Not surprising, says Trish McDermott, chief matchmaker at www.engage.com, a dating Web site. Practically every technical innovation has been used to enhance contact between the sexes. The invention of the railroad meant people could date outside of their immediate surroundings, the car created intimate backseat romances, the telephone made it possible to reach out and touch someone.
Heck, she says, in the 1800s, telegraph operators used to flirt through dots and dashes. Today's youths are using what's available to them.
"The computer is the way he's in touch with his friends," says Ann Ellen Dickter, Randy Schur's mom. "They pick up a computer the way we might have picked up the phone."
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