Adults learn new technology
CHICAGO (AP) - January 22, 2008 His friends' parents have posted greetings on his MySpace page
for all the world to see. And his 72-year-old grandmother sends him
online instant messages every day so they can better stay in touch
while he's at college.
"It's nice that adults know SOME things," says Seigal, an
18-year-old freshman at Binghamton University in New York. He
especially likes IMing with his grandma because he's "not a huge
talker on the phone."
Increasingly, however, he and other young people are feeling
uncomfortable about their elders encroaching on what many young
adults and teens consider their technological turf.
Long gone are the days when the average, middle-aged adult did
well to simply work a computer. Now those same adults have Gmail,
upload videos on YouTube, and sport the latest high-tech gadgets.
Young people have responded, as they always have, by searching
out the latest way to stay ahead in the race for technological
know-how and cool. They use Twitter, which allows blogging from
one's mobile phone or BlackBerry, or Hulu.com, a site where they
can download videos and TV programs.
They customize their cell phones with various faceplates and
ringtones. And, sometimes, they find ways to exclude adults - using
high-frequency ringtones that teens can hear but most adults can't,
for instance.
Nowhere are the technological turf wars more apparent than on
social networking sites, such as MySpace and Facebook, which went
from being student-oriented to allowing adults outside the college
ranks to join.
Gary Rudman, a California-based youth market researcher, has
heard the complaints. He regularly interviews young people who
think it's "creepy" when an older person - we're talking someone
they know - asks to join their social network as a "friend." It
means, among other things, that they can view each others' profiles
and what they and their friends post.
"It would be like a 40-year-old attending the prom or a frat
party," Rudman says. "It just doesn't work."
It's a particular quandary for image-conscious teens, says Eric
Kuhn, a junior at Hamilton College in upstate New York, who's
blogged about the etiquette of social networking.
He accepted his mom's invitation to be Facebook friends and has,
in turn, become online friends with other adults she knows. But so
far, he says, his 16-year-old sister has declined to add their mom
"because she thinks it is not cool."
Lakeshia Poole, a 24-year-old from Atlanta, says "my Facebook
self has become a watered down version of me." Worried about older
adults snooping around, she's now more careful about what she posts
and has also made her profile private, so only her online friends
can see it.
"It's somewhat a Catch-22, because now I'm hidden from the
people I would really like to connect with," she says.
Lauren Auster-Gussman, a freshman at Juniata College in
Pennsylvania, says it's particularly awkward when one of her
parents' friends asks to join her social network. She thinks
Facebook should only be used by people younger than, say, 40.
"I mean, I'm in college," she says. "There are bound to be at
least a few drunken pictures of me on Facebook, and I don't need my
parents' friends seeing them."
There are ways around the problem.
It's possible on some sites, for instance, to limit what someone
can see on your profile, though some users think it's a pain to
have to deal with that.
"That is the beauty of Facebook and other online social
networks. If you want to only interact with your peers, then you
can adjust the settings to only allow that," says Katie Jones, a
senior at Ohio Wesleyan University, who's studied ways prospective
students use Facebook to contact students at colleges and
universities they're interested in attending.
It's also possible to simply decline or ignore an adult's
request to be an online friend. Or adults could back off and only
use social networking to contact their own peers.
But it's not always so easy to relinquish that control,
especially for parents of teens, says Kathryn Montgomery, the
author of "Generation Digital: Politics, Commerce and Childhood in
the Age of the Internet" and mother of a 14-year-old.
"As parents, we have to figure out where to draw the line
between encouraging and allowing our teens to have autonomy, to
experience their separate culture, and when we need to monitor
their use of media," says Montgomery, a professor of communication
at American University.
She says it's especially important to help young people
understand that social networking is often more public than they
think. Sometimes monitoring them is the best way to do that.
Sue Frownfelter, a 46-year-old mom in Flint, Mich., thinks it's
less of an issue for parents who discover technology with - or even
before - their children. Among other things, she has a blog, uses
Twitter and has a Chumby, a personal Internet device that displays
anything from news and weather to photos and eBay auctions.
Her children, ages 9 and 11, begged her to allow them to have a
MySpace page, because she does. Instead, she suggested Imbee.com, a
social networking site for kids that allows parental monitoring.
"I can't imagine my life without technology! It has truly
become an extension of who I am and who my family will likely be,"
says Frownfelter, who works at a community college.
Still, in today's world, parents are finding that the urge to
stake out technological turf is starting at a very young age.
Jennifer Abelson, a mom in New York, says her 2-year-old
daughter asks every day if she can play on the "'puter" on such
kid-oriented sites as Noggin.com and Nickjr.com.
"She's constantly telling us 'I will do it!' and 'Go away!' if
we try to interfere with her 'working,"' Abelson says.
"It's pretty amazing to see technology ingrained at such a
young age. But I know she's learned so much from being able to use
technology on her own."
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Martha Irvine is an AP national writer. She can be reached at
mirvine(at)ap.org or via http://myspace.com/irvineap