Yeah, online is a whole different deal. It's a whole new anonymous frontier. I'll also say that the section of teens I see in the library may be a different breed, even the ones who come in primarily to hang out and do Facebook.
I'm cursed with the long view, though. Any time I'm tempted to say how much popular music sucks these days (except for fabulous Gaga), I remember that there was a generation who said that about Sinatra, for goddess' sake.
What I remember from my teens...well, we didn't have 'emo' as a pejorative back then, but to be too demonstrative about one's feelings denoted weakness in some way. Everyone still had emotions, of course, but if you fessed up to them — barring some disaster which justified outward emotion, like a Columbine-type event or a kid committing suicide — it just gave more ammo to the kids who would point out your 'weakness' so as to distract from their own. So it could be that not a lot really changes except the terminology. Teenagers have always been and will always be insecure beasts, and that will manifest in various ways depending on the generation and what culture/technology they're immersed in — look at the epidemic of online harassment, something that was confined to hallway taunts in previous generations.
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Date: 2010-04-03 06:46 pm (UTC)I'm cursed with the long view, though. Any time I'm tempted to say how much popular music sucks these days (except for fabulous Gaga), I remember that there was a generation who said that about Sinatra, for goddess' sake.
What I remember from my teens...well, we didn't have 'emo' as a pejorative back then, but to be too demonstrative about one's feelings denoted weakness in some way. Everyone still had emotions, of course, but if you fessed up to them — barring some disaster which justified outward emotion, like a Columbine-type event or a kid committing suicide — it just gave more ammo to the kids who would point out your 'weakness' so as to distract from their own. So it could be that not a lot really changes except the terminology. Teenagers have always been and will always be insecure beasts, and that will manifest in various ways depending on the generation and what culture/technology they're immersed in — look at the epidemic of online harassment, something that was confined to hallway taunts in previous generations.