Kids These Days
Posted by: David Bunch
New Years actually turned out pretty good. We had fun over at the youth group party on New Years (no law infractions or emergencies), and after church Sunday had a great New Year's day dinner with some couples at a friend's house.
Several of the couples have kids who are the same age as Kristen (13 years) and all of them including Kristen received mp3 players for Christmas. After dinner we were sitting in the living room talking when I looked around and noticed that all of the kids had their earbuds in and were jamming away. As anti-social as this behavior may sound, I was pretty impressed that each of them remained engaged in the conversation despite the blast to the ears.
Just as I was recovering from the shock of this new reality of the mp3 multi task, Kristen hits me with this:
After spending a loooong time on the computer, she tells me that she likes a particular guy from the church. Being the insightful wizard that I am, I realized that she had been "chatting" with him all that time. So I inquired as to whether or not he had asked her out. "We just talked things out," was her reply!
Talked things out???? They typed away on a keyboard and computer screen for hours!!
But wait, that's not exactly true either.
SHE was typing on the computer. HE was receiving the messages as text on his cell phone and replying back to her.
WHAATT???? This is "talking things out"????
I am pretty tech savvy myself and am not too far removed from the dating and social scene. I stay relatively connected to this generation thru my work with High School Boys Sunday School and the Youth Group. But I have to ask a question here.
What kind of social skills are these kids developing? It seems like the social setting of the very near future will be some sort of tech environment in which we listen to mp3 players and type or text feverishly on mobile devices.
On second thought, maybe this way is better. As long as Kristen is communicating through tech devices and not actually seeing someone, I don't have to worry about that first kiss!
New Years actually turned out pretty good. We had fun over at the youth group party on New Years (no law infractions or emergencies), and after church Sunday had a great New Year's day dinner with some couples at a friend's house.
Several of the couples have kids who are the same age as Kristen (13 years) and all of them including Kristen received mp3 players for Christmas. After dinner we were sitting in the living room talking when I looked around and noticed that all of the kids had their earbuds in and were jamming away. As anti-social as this behavior may sound, I was pretty impressed that each of them remained engaged in the conversation despite the blast to the ears.
Just as I was recovering from the shock of this new reality of the mp3 multi task, Kristen hits me with this:
After spending a loooong time on the computer, she tells me that she likes a particular guy from the church. Being the insightful wizard that I am, I realized that she had been "chatting" with him all that time. So I inquired as to whether or not he had asked her out. "We just talked things out," was her reply!
Talked things out???? They typed away on a keyboard and computer screen for hours!!
But wait, that's not exactly true either.
SHE was typing on the computer. HE was receiving the messages as text on his cell phone and replying back to her.
WHAATT???? This is "talking things out"????
I am pretty tech savvy myself and am not too far removed from the dating and social scene. I stay relatively connected to this generation thru my work with High School Boys Sunday School and the Youth Group. But I have to ask a question here.
What kind of social skills are these kids developing? It seems like the social setting of the very near future will be some sort of tech environment in which we listen to mp3 players and type or text feverishly on mobile devices.
On second thought, maybe this way is better. As long as Kristen is communicating through tech devices and not actually seeing someone, I don't have to worry about that first kiss!
