The "Life With Technology: Part II - A Teenager Living Without It!" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Fooling around with my iPhone, trying to take a few photos of my passport and driver's license for an upcoming vacation.  My phone seems to stay in my pocket more than out of my pocket, but then again...I'm not a teen anymore!  Visits from our granddaughters is always interesting and fun, but they tend to have their iPhone in their hand every minute they are are awake.  I know, they aren't the only teenagers who are like that, but they seem to miss so much of what goes on around them when they have their eyes glued to their phones.  An article in the Lancaster newspaper's  Education section a few weeks ago featured a story by a young girl named Deanna who was a high school senior at Garden Spot High School in Lancaster County.  She titled her story "On life as a teenager without social media." My guess is she is about 18 years old and writes about how she managed to survive her public school career without social media.  She makes the statement that she not only survived, but thrived without social media.  I find it hard to imagine anyone 18 years old sitting down to eat, watch TV or even go out with their friends without a phone glued to their head.  How she got through four years of high school without using social media is truly amazing.  In the article she writes that she has to explain many times to friends why she can't message them on Snapchat.  They often seem puzzled when she tells them her value as a person isn't dependent on how many followers she might have on social media.   Oh, how she would have loved living in the era when I was in high school.  Social media wasn't more than television, radio or the local paper.  And being social was more about what movie everyone was going to see or who could we ask to go bowling with us rather than how many apps we had on our phone or how many followers we had accumulated.  Do you realize that it was only about 20 years ago that mobile phones came into being.  That seems like ages ago to someone in high school, but it is only a small part of my life.  The teenagers of today never lived in a time when there weren't mobile phones.  They never experienced a birthday or holiday when their most requested present had to be the latest version of some mobile phone.  Today, more than 2 billion people use some sort of social media every single day.  That number is roughly one third of the world's population.  I'm one of them.  Are you one, also?  I look at, read and contribute to about a half-dozen sites daily.  You're reading one of those sites right now!  Now you see why Apple, Samsung, LG, Sony and hundreds more phone manufacturers are so wealthy.  Deanna, in her story, writes that the US Department of Health and Human Services reports that use among teenagers is staggeringly high: more than 70% of teens use more than one social media site each day.  I find that number low.  But, social media is also one of the leading causes of mental health issues and identity crises in young people today.  Pressure from peers to create social media accounts and have an online social presence is a big thing to teenagers.  And, while the teens are trying their hardest to be "cool" online, many health professionals and even the teens parents are discussing the dangers and pitfalls of social media.  Deanna tells about how hard it is to discover and develop you own unique voice and where you may stand among your peers.  Social media doesn't make it any easier to discover your identity.  She explains that she was late getting her first smartphone and as a result, was content with her life's direction by that time.  She decided that Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat weren't for her.  She does use her phone to text and call friends and classmates, but that's about it.  Luckily, my two sons and daughter didn't have the extra pressure of social media as they were going through their teenage years.  Drugs and alcohol were enough to try and conquer.  But, two of my children now have teenagers and are experiencing what my wife and I had to do when they were teenagers, but only two-fold with social media added to the list.  Deanna says she is likely to join the social media landscape some day, but wanted young people to understand that there is no stipulation that forces them to establish and maintain an online presence.  She advises teenagers to be their own person, follow their own path and join only if you want to, when they want to.  She is a strong individual and I commend her for her courage in fighting the urge to join social media.  It seems she is one of the few who have chosen the path she has, but she will be stronger for it and will look back in years to come and realize what she accomplished in her life that she probably wouldn't have, had she been tied to social media for a lifetime.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.