Are you a Social (media) Butterfly?

 It’s a Saturday morning and there’s a knock at the door. Knock. Knocking. Knock some more. You get there and pull back the door to find your best pal from down the block ready with his bike for the days adventure.  You hear your ma yelling something about brushing your teeth before you head out for the day, but you’re already gone. Ready for adventure, ready to play with your friend and snoop around the neighborhood (neighborhoods) and find out what’s been going on since the previous Saturday. You couldn’t wait to get out of the house.  You couldn’t wait to get out of the neighborhood (secretly of course).  You played in the woods with your friends who all met up at different times throughout the day (depending on how quickly they could bust out of their own houses).  You had a designated meeting place (places) because you didn’t carry around phones and you weren’t able to text or call or snap or whatever at a moments notice.  You craved the face to face interaction with your friends.  It was necessary. It was mandatory.  It was like breathing.  It had to happen.  Friendshipping used to be showing up, in person, being present and enjoying that time with one another interacting and communicating with one another.  But, now…  Now, showing up is the equivalent of snapping the best silly filter or sharing the funniest meme on facebook, having the best picture on insta or the best video on tiktok.  It;s a whole new world.  Some kids are flourishing and some are flopping.  Some kids feel like they have more friends than they would have otherwise while others feel like they are only ignored by multiple avenues that wouldn’t be accessible otherwise.  It’s a whole new world and not in the beautiful sense that Aladdin was singing about.  

 

Blast from the past. That’s a story that was clearly 15, 20, 30 years ago. My kids, In 2020?  Well, let’s not get started on 2020, but without phones and the many social media platforms, they wouldn’t know what to do.  I wonder if they would be as social as they are. I wonder if they would know as much as they do about other people. (I always wonder if they know too much).   I’m at a complete loss on how to really monitor and parent and just keep up with what they should and shouldn’t be allowed to do.  Ugh.  I am not trying to make this a post about parenting because it isn’t, but it is about social media and friendships and teens and how it is taking over so please don’t mind my rant.


I've been thinking about a lot of random things lately though and I can't help but wonder if there won't come a time where this all sort of shuts down for a time. When and if that happens, do these younger generations even know how to communicate? I can't even say that some older generations wouldn't be on the struggle bus if that happened.


It's okay to be a social (media) butterfly, but what if, on occasion, we take the media out of that phrase?


Everything should have balance.


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