Do you wonder what life would have been like if you had had twitter as a teen?
Hubby and I were having this discussion the other evening and think could have been a car crash, especially for me.
As a teen or young adult you don’t have the life experience and restraint you do as you get older – at least I didn’t.
I very much wore my heart on my sleeve as a youngster and will openly admit I had a pretty shocking time of it. I wonder how much I would have “over-shared” in my emotive state and would it still affect me now?
As a parent of teens I see fall outs happen over social media all the time and it’s not just the kids – it’s adults too. I am all for a good debate and understand that not all of us share the same opinions and outlook on life, but berating each other for their own personal choices is just not on.
I see jealousy around every corner, “keeping up with the Jones'” just got bigger and god forbid someone doesn’t get invited on a night out or even an impromptu meet up at the park. You think toddlers have spectacular meltdowns – just wait until they are teenagers with all those hormones surging through their bodies. I have had to “advise” my teens to remove certain posts from Facebook or not get involved before now.
Hubby is a manager in retail and tells me it is now common place for potential employers to check the social media accounts of their applicants, which is quite scary when you think about it.
What could they find?
A tendancy to go out and get plastered every night? Certainly not a good advert for someone turning up to work on time, if at all, but I am pretty sure we have all done it at some point or another.
Someone living for the weekend – certainly won’t suit a job in retail that requires weekend working and constant updates every minute / hour of the day – could they live without their smartphone?
Questionable photographs, way out there political views, there is so much information at our fingertips these days, could it really cost you a job? I think it could – the same as someone having tattoos around their face and neck – it would put potential employers off.
If an employer does that, would a potential boyfriend / girlfriend do it too? What would put you off a potential partner – history, cad like behaviour etc
Before hubby and I were married we split up for a time and I fully admit I tore myself apart checking what he was up to and who he was talking to on myspace at the time. It’s all very well the local gossips filling you in but if its in black and white and seeing someone apparently moving on with their life without you is heartbreaking – this is what our teens see in triplicate.
I do wonder if we would have achieved what we have with the distraction of social media where we are tied to how many Instagram likes and followers we have every day – would we have even met if we’d had a phone glued to our hand?
How do you think you’d have handled social media as a teen and do you think we should be doing more to warn them of the perils?
I do wonder! I am so glad it wasn’t about when i was at school or uni, i can only imagine the turmoil shudders
Yes, this!
It is a really interesting phenomenon and one I think many anthropology, sociology & psychology papers will be written on over the next 20 years.
Great post 🙂
I’m fixating myself on blogs like yours, who are a few years ahead in the teen stakes. That’s the good thing about social media – whatever I need to learn, I can do so fairly quickly from other parents who have been there before me. But yes, it scares me, especially given I have a daughter who is fiercely independent and will try to keep me out of her personal life at all costs as she gets older.
I dread to imagine! I wonder if would have amplified the teenage angst – almost egging it on a bit more. I do recall AOL messenger and having a pager ( I KNOW A PAGER LIKE WHY?!??!) in my late teens !
i’m SO glad social media wasn’t really around with I was a teenager! I used to write a diary and it makes me feel sick that I should have spouted some of the rubbish in public if I had been given the chance, eep! x
Huge sigh of relief on my part that there was no social media when I was in my teens. Huge frown at having to worry about my kids dealing with it when they’re in my teens.
I’m lucky that my teen is very level headed and only really using social media to catch up with the lads from school.
But reading Izzy Dix’s poem broke my heart – I could have easily have written her words and that could have been me if the internet was so big back then – it is a frightening time for parents I think.
This is such a great post and such an important issues. My kids aren’t on social media yet, but I know it won’t be long.
I think about this A LOT. I know that us adults probably wouldn’t have handled it well, some of us put way too much on social media as it is! I’ve spent time talking to my teenager about thinking before we write, who else might be reading it, what message we want to leave behind AND in light of recent events, not using sites such as Ask FM. It’s a scary world and teenagers are just such loose cannons at times, as are adults it would seem!
This is a conversation hubby & I have a lot, and tbh we’re just thankful our kids are so much younger and we don’t have to worry about all this just yet. I would have been a car crash too, and am glad I didn’t grow up in the age of Twitter!! Great post 🙂 #PlugYourPost