January 2004 Issue - Essay # 6
The
Weird World of the 21st Century Teenager
By
Lynne Bromley
|
I
give you fair warning. Teenagers
like Messengers. Yahoo
Messenger, AOL Messenger, Windows, MSN, and always, of course, the latest
version. Preferably the
not-completely-tested-yet, full-of-bugs one.
With stranger noises and sillier emoticons than the one before.
In
many ways, Messengers are good for parents as well.
Your kids can talk for hours to their friends without you having to
invite them over, or pay the phone bill, or stump up for more mobile phone
top-ups. They're not standing about with the front door open, letting the
heat out, or loitering about on corners. The quality of conversation is
not good to adult ears, though. I
can understand why so many teenagers get computers in their bedrooms at
this stage, because three solid hours of "Why Joseph dumped
Kelly" is more than your average parent can take.
If
it's not Joseph and Kelly, it's
the grunting and the long moody silences.
Grunting and moodiness are important, especially if you haven't
seen the person you're grumpy with since ... oh, about an hour and a half
ago, when you said farewell at the bus stop.
Most
of what's said on Messengers is "private" and "confidential."
When your teen hits the Messenger stage, you can start to feel
like an interloper in your own home. Expect
some battles about privacy. If
you're really concerned, desperate (or just plain nosey), chat logs are
your friend! When
I was a teenager, we all had CB radios and had to think of
"handles" for ourselves. The
trick was to find something that made you sound mysterious, yet not too
pretentious. Lots of people
downright lied. "Lovely
Lady" and "Sex Machine" spring to mind.
My dad thought the CB was silly, with all those daft names, AND it
interfered with the telly. With
Messenger, things have moved on again.
It is no longer enough to be called Fluffy or The Stud.
Now you have to go for the bizarre or the deeply depressing, or
include lots of unnecessary symbols. Recent
examples spotted on this machine include: (F)TWISTED
CHILD (F) don't
know what to tell ya : ) I'm
a Rockstar Boyfriend, somebody snap me up!!
(Good to see people still lie!!) keep
the pictures they never change only the people in them do !<<like
the dinosaurs some day (name deleted to protect the innocent) will become
extinct>>! Because
teenagers like to save their energy for grunting, they like the Messenger
Automatic Sign-in. Just
connect to the Net, and hello, you're there, none of that faffing about
with the password. Which is
fine, but as a parent I find it quite distressing to get online and have Stop The World I Want To Get Off!
8=( ask me how many paracetamol would be
needed to end this dismal existence. At
this point you have to decide whether to admit you're really There's
Accidents And There's Just Plain Stupid's mum, or quickly and quietly sign
off and pretend you didn't notice. You
should also be aware that Messengers are like trainers.
They go out of fashion quickly.
You spend weeks learning user names and how to turn off the sound
effects, only to be informed that "Nobody goes on Yahoo anymore,
Yahoo's crap. I've downloaded
SuperMegaExtraGroovy 6." You
can argue, you can sulk, but you might as well just go with the flow and
learn how SMEG 6 works. What does the future hold? Will I walk into the room to find that eight holographic teenagers have beamed down my phone line and are steadily munching through the contents of my fridge? Will I log on one day and find myself talking to a 14-year-old alien from the planet Snaaarg, who wants to know what the chemistry homework was? Will Web cam technology improve so that I actually know what my daughter's friends look like, rather than them just being wobbly blobs? Who knows? This, my dear friends, is the weird world of the modern teenager. At least, it doesn't interfere with the telly.
|
|
Author's Biography Lynne Bromley is a single parent with three kids and lives on the South Coast of England in a house full of budgies, hamsters, rabbits and odd plimsolls. E-mail Lynne at raingoddess69@hotmail.com
|
Essay
Reviews! Site Reviews! We'd
like to know from our readers if they enjoy Seven Seas Magazine! Do
you have praise or complaints? Suggestions or ideas? Get notified! Would you
like to get notified as soon as new Seven Seas issues are published on the
Web? Tell a friend! Do you enjoy
the Seven Seas site?
|
|
Go back to the table
of contents
|
