There is a story in today's edition of The Scranton Times about a high-school aged young lady who attempted to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge. According to the story there are implications that social media pressures may have played role in what happened.
I'm not going to debate the merits or detriments of something like Facebook. Smarter people than I can do better justice to the topic. Besides, social media hasn't created additional pressures for young adults; rather, I think it simply has amplified what pressures that already exist by something like a factor of 100. You see this all the time when it comes to the subject of bullying...Facebook didn't invent bullying, it just made it instantaneous and much more efficient.
As a parent I feel bad for young adults these days. The society we have created for them, one where "having" is the Gospel, is one where it's virtually impossible to actually have some kind of contentment. What's more the good and the bad now come at light speed, creating so much data to assimilate that it's no wonder even the brightest of young adults must walk around in a daze. So very much to try and understand happening all at the same time. Oh, that and the fact that you aren't anything unless you have the latest gadget from Apple.
So here's to teenagers in 2011..."old" folks like me maybe quick to be critical, but the fact is that most of us are secretly grateful that we aren't 15 in 2011, as I doubt many of us could actually cut it in the world we have helped to create.
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