#Being13 in 1978: "It's a Heartache"

The original selfie, Woolworths' photo booth, 1978

What was it like #Being13 in 1978?  A few words come to mind including awkward, unpopular, pimple-faced and theatre-nerd.  But, was it all that bad?

Certainly 13-year-olds today are feeling the same anxiety at not being part of the popular crowd, suffering mockery by the class bully, and exercising their individuality in the face of potential rejection. I know.  I recently raised two 13-year-olds, a daughter and a son (now 16 and 14). 

But, with the advent of the Internet, and our digital kids unprecedented access to influences via the omnipresent smartphone – with selfies, Snapchat and sexting - this generation of 13-year-olds are faced with a whole new array of angst-ridden challenges, including FOMO, “phubbing” (phone snubbing), cyber-bulling and getting enough “likes” on Instagram.  They have grown a new appendage – a constant companion that connects them 24/7 and begs for their attention.  Where we used to put combs in our back pockets, they put phones.  

My memories of #Being13 are more than a bit foggy. Luckily I have two hand-crafted scrapbooks filled with photos that bring me back; all due to my sentimental dad who inspired me to chronicle my life using snapshots, glue and magic markers (and affirmed by Kodak's Times of Your Life commercial, “Do you remember baby, do you remember the times of your life?). The photos are fuzzy and the pages worn, but the memories live on – my first overnight school trip to Washington D.C. and visiting the Capitol, our family vacation to Hershey Park, my sister and I riding the Super Dooper Looper five times and gorging ourselves on chocolate, lots and lots of camp photos, and the National Honor Society Award ceremony (caption reads, “My most embarrassed look!”).

Growing Up with “Dr. Google” – A Prescription for Stress or Empowerment? Digital Daughters Weigh In...

Your 14-year-old daughter tells you that she is worried about a dry patch on her elbow, a sore on the tip of her tongue and a bent eyelash that hurts when she blinks.  She has been Googling her ailments, and fears the worst.  You: 

A. Call the doctor immediately.

B. Tell her that you will use your search engines to diagnose her ailments and get to the bottom of them all.

C. Tell her not to worry.  Let her know that while these small ills are worth looking into, they are probably also worth a giggle, and they will surely go away.

D.  Call 911! 

For every lump, bump, rash, pain, pimple and bruise, kids today have constant access to an always on-call “Dr. Google” – an omnipresent option for self-diagnosis.  But, is the ability to search the Internet’s health sites a good thing for our adolescents – offering them helpful information, self-awareness and self-diagnoses - or are we raising a future generation of hypochondriacs?

Growing Up Female & Social - Part II: What Teens Wish We Understood

Our parents had it so easy…a letter was theirs to be sneakily read, a phone call, to be eavesdropped.  But we live in a world of pinging secret text messages. Codes, acronyms and apps never to be translated – or even known.  It’s another shift.  A new vocabulary with apps that are missing vowels (tumblr), and acronyms that are meant to leave us out of the story (PIR: Parent in Room).

Where is Benedict Cumberbatch (a.k.a. Sherlock, Alan Turing) when you need him?

Welcome to the new reality.  But what feels like a tidal shift to us, is just a new software update for our teens.

When I bring up teens and social media with my friends, we share the eye roll; the heavy sign; the shaking of the head.  And, inevitably, one of us gives voice to the old lament – the refrain of generations past, “What’s to become of kids today?”

In this, “Growing Up Female and Social - Part II,” I reveal my Digital Daughter Ambassadors answers to what they think we don’t get about social media and what they would like us to know.