The Younger Generation

My dad works at an elementary school and our talks about his day at work are always amusing, and not in a good way. The older girls in the school have been having a lot of issues that are mainly focused around social media, specifically Instagram. A lot of the physical and verbal altercations stem from Instagram. Due to this, he asked me to come up to his school and talk to a group of girls about using social media for more positive things. I shared a few of my viral videos with him a while ago, so in his head, I’m this big social media influencer.

We (my sisters, him and I), have talks about how differently the younger generations are growing up compared to how we did. Back then, when I was around his student’s ages, Myspace was out and a lot of my friends were making profiles. I vividly remember secretly making a profile and then my mom making me delete it once she saw what it was. Of course, at the time I didn’t understand and thought she was just being controlling, but now that I look back, what business did we really have being on Myspace? We can argue that it was a way for us to talk to our friends online instead of on the phone, but what about the aspect of posting ourselves on the internet? Now that I’m older I can see why my mom made me wait a few years later to make one.

I really think that because the internet was such a new thing for our generation, a lot of parents monitored the amount of time their children spent on the internet… at least mine did. She made sure that we spent just about the same amount of time or more on things like reading, or being active outside. Times are different and these Philly streets are MUCH different than what they were when I was growing up. Parents no longer feel safe letting their kids go outside to play, so it’s all understandable. On the contrary, the younger generation have a much greater access to information than we did growing up. They’re consuming much more than we ever did at their age by the hands of social media and most parents aren’t monitoring their child’s internet consumption. See the problem?

Then when you sit back and really think about it, the kids don’t really have the space to be KIDS. We had those tv shows where the characters were the age they were portraying: That’s So Raven, Suite Life of Zack & Cody, All That, One on One, etc. We were watching kids just be kids. We even had certain clothing stores geared towards younger girls and teens: Limited Too, Loyce Leslie. Even certain music videos were restricted to us during the day. We had time to just be kids which is much different than what it’s like growing up now. The tv shows aren’t the same, literally every age group shops at the same stores (which is not a good thing). Like I said, these kids really don’t have the space to be kids.

The evolution of the internet is definitely the main cause of these shifts (in my opinion). This is the main reason my dad wanted me to talk to his students. He sees how much they are consumed with social media. He sees what they really use social media for: mainly bullying and posting fighting videos. He really wanted me to share with his students the positivity of social media, opposed to what they’re used to using social media for.

During my presentation, I talked about the benefits of using social media: sharing knowledge, marketing your business, making money, using it to make a social impact, etc. I also incorporated my social channels into the presentation and explained how just from being myself and being consistent with posting, I’ve been able to work with many brands and receive free products. Just from the looks on their faces, they seemed impressed and intrigued.

Afterwards a few of his students followed me (which I really don’t approve of, but I’ll let them live a little), and I was able to network with a woman who travels around to different schools doing something similar. She had questions about how to become more consistent with posting and showing up for yourself on social media. She also inquired if this was something I did for a living: going around to elementary schools to share the positive impact of social media. She was shocked when I admitted I was just doing my dad a favor, and invited me to consider coming out to a neighborhood high school next. I would honestly consider because I love being a mentor especially to younger girls.

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