Skip to main content

Keeping Up

I have learned interesting facts about how tweens (and now early teens) use social media from J. The flavor of the month may go from Tumblr to Vine to Instagram without warning. Like so many migrating birds, the group leave their their current home to nest in the new one. The social routines are resumed while new norms are learned. That's about where peace and tranquility end. The worth of each person is measured by the number of followers or friends they have - the numbers are astoundingly high. A popular kid would have close to a thousand of them. 

Those lower down in the totem pole may have less than a hundred. If a kid is really worried about their social status they may choose not to have any social presence at all. But being absent is hardly an easy option. For those that are on, there is the constant pressure of keeping track of who friended and unfriended you, who followed and unfollowed you and finally how to respond to such stumuli. Everything you do on social media is some form of signalling. It is very important to get that signal right. Kids routinely delete their social media accounts and create new ones - like a new birth with new chances and opportunities. 

J like her friends is learning to navigate these treacherous waters - often confused and bewildered about where they stands and what that standing means.

Comments

Anonymous said…
The social media has really changed the way people interact now. The days where people made friends by meeting and spending time with them, seems to be long gone. I wonder how the new generation copes with it. Do share J's thoughts on the subject, on how she's dealing with it... just like you shared the issues she's facing.

Thanks,
Hope

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t

Cheese Making

I never fail to remind J that there is a time and place for everything. It is possibly the line she will remember me by when I am dead and gone given how frequently she hears it. Instead of having her breakfast she will break into a song and dance number from High School Musical well past eight on Monday morning. She will insist that I watch and applaud the performance instead of screaming at her to finish her milk and cereal. Her sense of occasion is seriously lacking but then so is mine. Consider for example, a person walks into the grocery store with the express purpose of buying detergent because they are fresh out of it and laundry is only half way done. However instead of heading straight for detergent, they wander over to the natural foods aisle and go berserk upon finding goat milk on sale for a dollar a gallon. They at once proceed to stock pile so they can turn it to huge quantities home-made feta cheese. That person would be me. It would not concern me in the least that I ha

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques