September 2010 Parting Glance
First it was AOL Instant Messenger. Then text messages. Now Facebook pages. Who knows what will be next! But they all had one thing in common: my daughter could not live without them, and I did not understand why.
Time for dinner? Be right there, I have to update my status - ‘dinner w the fam.’ Bzzzzzz. First text message of the meal. Bzzzzzz. Another message. Bzzzzzz. Another? From the same person? The girl and I didn’t argue about much, but this was one thing that we just did not see eye-to-eye on. Why was she so mesmerized with the people who were elsewhere, while ignoring and neglecting the ones right in front of her?
It got so heated at one point that I printed out the detail of the more than 4,000 text messages from a month’s cell phone bill, and taped them together end to end like a royal scroll. I confronted her with it, rolling it out from the living room, through the kitchen, out the back door, and halfway across the yard. I pointed out that even if each text message took just one minute, she spent nearly 70 hours that month sending and receiving text messages!
I think this had an impact, but it was not the one I expected. I think the bigger impact was on me. I started thinking, why do we have such differing views on this? Then it occurred to me: she knew no other way. We probably had a PC in our house from the time she was born. To her, a cell phone is not a luxury, it is a necessity. And as for text messaging, it’s not just fun; it’s one of her primary means of communication. She even gets schedule updates for her job via text messages.
So the question came from my daughter: how can we parents survive in the current day without regular use of these technologies? Well the answer is clear: we have something our kids don’t — a different means to gather this type of information. It’s called “Face-to-Face Book.”
What is Face-to-Face Book? It’s the tool parents use to keep up with goings-on in the neighborhood, the latest news on their kids, the important stuff that we need to know. How do we access Face-to-Face Book? In the bleachers at the football game, in the parking lot waiting for them to come out from the homecoming dance, in line at the grocery store, after the PTA meeting. Just like their kids, parents like to share pictures, hear about the latest news, and yes, gossip.
Parenting Magazine
So kids, if you were wondering how parents always seem to know what you were up to, that was Face-to-Face Book in action. “I hear he tore his ACL and will be having surgery…”; “So it sounds like she got accepted to Penn…”; “I see that those two broke up…” Hey, how did you know all that? Face-to-Face Book.
child Magazine
They say that every generation thinks of their youth as the ‘good old days’ and tends to initially reject new ideas, tools and technologies. So by the time parents conquer social media tools like Facebook and their brethren, our kids will have abandoned them and picked up on something new. Oh well, hopefully we can count on Face-to-Face Book a little while longer...
