While we adults are caught up in catching up on our past on Facebook, there's a possibility our kids are going to miss out on one of the great joys of late teenagehood. Escaping.
An interesting piece by Peggy Orenstein in the New York Times this week ponders whether kids will be able "to get busy with the embarrassing, exciting, muddy, wonderful work of creating an adult identity" with four hundred of their old high school buddies watching over a T-1 line.
She's got a point. While I kept up with several of my high school friends when I left for college, it was mostly via e-mail and AOL's Instant Messenger, maybe the sporadic phone call. Although more technologically advanced than Orenstein (who admits she grew up in the "postage stamp" age of college communication), the advantages to all these forms of communication were clear - I could start . . . and stop . . . them at my will.
Facebook is non-stop action. Change your relationship status, and everyone knows . . . now (and trust me, those shockwaves can resonate - ask the cousin who accidentally erased her husband when she was trying to update her favorite books list.). As long as they're your "friend," anyone can and will see - and can and will comment.
Orenstein posits kids will remain tethered to home much longer via technological apron strings, tied to the kids they were forced to spend time with in high school and might otherwise naturally distance themselves from come college. Except, thanks to Facebook (and to be fair, Myspace), now they're tied . . . for good.
I think she might be crediting Facebook with a little more power than is warranted, however. Surveys have found that even users with a friends list in the thousands traditionally only interact with a solid core of "friends." I'd hazard a guess that's the same core today's kids will take to college with them - like the high school friends we kept contact with back in the day. She's also overestimating kids' fidelity. The teenagers I know "friend" and "un-friend" one another with the speed of an eyeroll, to an extent I doubt will change much in the early days of college.
The truth is that old saying, "you can never go home again," will never die. Because leaving your parents' house, even if your friends follow, changes you. Often for the good, sometimes for the bad. But kids grow up - even kids with a Facebook.
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