This Year: Resolve to Text Your Teen More

As it stands, the teens in our household do not have texting on their phones. Our high schoolers get it from two angles. As a researcher of adolescent social media use, I don't necessarily want them growing up experiencing the cellphone as an extension of their friendship cluster. As an accountant, my wife sees no financial reason to do it.

brad howell

Poor kids - if they ever want to do anything, they pretty much have to pay for it themselves.

However - within boundaries - I do not believe teen texting is bad!

I actually think its a positive trend and a great way for teens to interact with each other when they are not physically present.

It certainly is less disruptive to the family than the days when teens would tie up a land line for hours on end.

Teens need the support that their friendships provide. Texting can be a healthy supplement to that. It works for parents too!

Almost every parent who texts their teens feels closer to them. The majority of teens who text with their parents in turn also feel closer to them.

Teens and parents feeling closer to each other? Sounds like a positive outcome for a counter-intuitive New Year's Resolution...

When To Make Sure You Say 'Goodbye' Online

© Rhphotos | Dreamstime.comBe

Among social media users, younger teens are the most likely to filter online interactions only from their own perspective of reality. They have little capacity to view life from another's shoes without being prompted to do so. Additionally, they use their new found Internet independence to gather positive interactions with people they know online - they are very in tune with whether interactions would suggest you like them or not. Consequently, more than anyone else in your SM network, younger teens are the most likely to get a sense that they have been ignored online. This seems to be especially true of younger females, but there are plenty examples of young men that are quick to send an IM the moment they see a green icon light up online and looking for affirmation from you.

Teens reaching out to you online is a great thing - it reveals that they value your relationship. Using social media to reinforce relationships with younger teens in your life is good for them - it helps build 'social capital' - an important ingredient on the journey to adulthood. The reason they view the interaction pretty much only from their definition of reality is because they are concrete thinkers. It goes with the territory. So, when the conversation needs to be wrapped up (and it would practically never end without a pop up video of a dancing kitten), it is an important practice to concretely end the conversation with a solid 'good-bye'.

And, for good measure, why not throw in an emoticon? Everyone loves to stick out their tongue when they get the chance...no?!

  

Want to Feel Closer To Your Teen? Text Them

© Stanislav Butygin | Dreamstime.com

One supporting area teens need to successfully transition from childhood to adulthood is a sense of closeness to emotionally encouraging adults - like parents for example. Feelings of closeness is about the strengths of bonds between parents and kids. Like all needs, closeness is rated from the perspective of the child, not the parent. To that end, research indicates that almost 2/3 of teens feel closer to their parents when they exchange text messages with them. That in itself is a pretty good reason to start adding text messages to your relational connection repertoire. For parents however, the number who feel closer to their teens when texting them jumps to 90%. That means almost every parent can feel closer to their teen by exchanging texts. Though no technological tool can replace a quality offline relationship, positive affirmation is always a good thing, and good things tend to replicate themselves.

So send a text to your kids today...just wait until they get out of school to do it - their teachers will thank you.

R U An Inadvertent Cyber Bully?

Have you ever left an app with instant message abilities open on a different tab or even different window? Then you might have been a cyber bully perpetrator and didn't even know it!

© Andres Rodriguez | Dreamstime.com

This is common practice for many of us to have multiple tabs open online at the same time. Some of those tabs are open to social media sites like Facebook that have IM features to it. No big deal?

Well, probably not, unless you have any early adolescents as part of your IM contacts.

Cyber bullying is most prevalent among younger teens. More than half of teens who have experienced cyber bullying in the past several months are most likely to report that the form of bullying was by being ignored online.

That's right...being ignored.

This can happen intentionally, but it can also happen accidentally. Early adolescents tend to be concrete thinkers, they take the world at face value - everything is what it appears to be. Mr. Bean is a caricature of this. If they want to IM with you and your online icon is lit up, then subconsciously to an early adolescent you are available.

But if you are not? The lack of response is unnerving to a young person.

However, there is hope!

If you have a habit have using multiple tabs, make sure your message alerts are activated. If you are going to be away from your computer for a while, take the time to log off any IM enabled sites. Finally, teach younger teens and pre-teens to understand that a lit icon does not necessarily mean another person is there. They can understand this, they just need prompting. Also, teach them to be aware of how their icons may appear to their friends. This learned behavior can vastly reduce the number of perceived cyber bullying incidences.

How have you seen misunderstandings happen online because people were not physically sharing the same space?

Is Mr. Bean Really That Funny?

The presence of Mr. Bean was one of a several entertaining highlights in last week's Olympic opening ceremonies. There are those who find him painfully funny and other's who simply dismiss him as British humor. Regardless, Mr. Bean is one of the few characters that is embraced across a wide range of cultures. Why?

Rowan Atkinson has described this character as a 10 year old boy trapped in a grown man's body. 10 year old boys intuitively accept the world at face value. On top of that, this particular 'trapped' boy appears to be fairly introverted and has an aversion to using verbal skills. An adult encountering the world as a 10 year old boy creates a sense of awkwardness that is rather humorous, if not painfully so. This childhood experience is shared across many cultures, even if adulthood has slammed it out of us. This is a life stage experience we tend to forget.

For my friends who either work with pre-teens or find opportunities to engage them online, Mr Bean is worth a second look. There are some adults who expect pre-teens to act like grown ups online and get frustrated when they don't. But the reality is that they can't - they are not adults! If you need a reminder of what the world looks to a 10 year old boy, watch some Mr. Bean sketches - he paints a great caricature of life as a boy in a world that expects more from him!

What's your favorite Mr. Bean moment? Do you see him as a 10 year old?

Using Social Media To Connect Extended Family

© Swaminathan Narayanan | Dreamstime.com

Social media is a great tool to connect extended family with each other, especially considering the distances that often separate grandparents from grandchildren and cousins from each other and their aunts and uncles. The good news is that many teens think social media helps them stay in contact with extended family too. 


For extended families that travel together, one idea is to setup a family event page. Because the anticipation of the trip can be as much fun as the trip itself, a page like this will gain momentum quickly. Encourage those going on the trip to offer lodging, meal and activity ideas. Large groups tend to go back to the same place as they have been previously, so post some old pictures of past trips and links to new experiences. Tap into the cleverness of that crazy uncle who knows all the weird trivia to create games or contests, and then award winners at family gatherings. Use it during the trip as a place to post gathering times, locations and contact information, and encourage teens especially to post videos and pictures capturing family memories. 


Every family has their story, creating a place to gather memories and anticipate new ones will build connections both across and between generations.


How is your family using social media to keep connected with those you don't see regularly?

Don't Step In the Cow Poo!

My parent's were in town this weekend and re-shared a story of a time when my son was about 3 years old and staying with my parents on their cattle ranch. Walking across the cow pasture, Grandma helped avoid the numerous cow pies with a simple warning to watch out for the cow poo. As they zig-zagged across the field, they came to the winter feeding area, one end of which had a rather large mound of cow manure that the tractors had pushed out of the feeding area to clear the ground. What was a fairly disgusting hill to most adults became a Mt. Everest that needed to be conquered in a child's mind. With surprising speed and determination, grandson tore off to climb manure mountain, leaving grandma in the dust with little to stop the horrifying collision of child and poo but a shouting appeal to STOP, DON'T CLIMB THAT HILL!

© Serghei Starus | Dreamstime.com

Whether it was the shrill in grandma's voice, fear of the unknown or the action of an obedient child, forturnately for grandma, her grandson stopped short of becoming a brown ball of muck. Of course, bewildered, he turned to grandma to ask why not, to which the instructive reply came that the hill was in fact a really large pile of cow poo. Confused, my son turned back to the hill of manure, studying it for a moment before asking a simple question of childhood wonder:

"Was that a big cow?"

Experience is a great thing. From experience we gain wisdom, we develop an ability for insight, and we use it to frame an intuitive understanding of what we are experiencing in this world. In fact, everything we experience for the first time is filtered through a mental filter of past experiences that help us form an understanding, or perspective really, of our new reality. This tool of interpretation happens instinctively, we are not overtly aware that we utilize it. Consequently, it is easy to expect others to have the same intuitive sense that we have. It is easy to get frustrated with people who don't seem to get it.

Social media as an expression of human community is fraught with intuitive misunderstandings. The reality is that early and middle age teens do not necessarily have the life experience (and at times the cognitive ability) to interpret the social messages they are experiencing or understand the rippling social consequences of their own postings. Even though it may feel that teens want their space, it is important for adults to be very aware of their kid's social footprint, being available to guide young people away from the piles of poo that are often present on social media postings.

The best way to accomplish this is to walk these social fields together, being ever available both online and off to provide an additional perspective of the manure mountains.

Blessings on the journey!

Brad

Why You Don't Want A "Social Media Voice" In Youth Ministry

© Amritanshu Singh | Dreamstime.com

Looking through an upcoming conference website I noticed a break out session focusing on social media. Of course, this gets my interest as I pretty much always take the time to read such descriptions. Most of these make me angry and this one was no exception.

The thrust of the breakout is that social media exists because the cry of the human heart is for community and this cry fuels further social technological advances. The description sets up a sort of snapshot take of social media, a mere and incomplete reflection of real relationships. The story is the same as many of these types of sessions: we as a society do not get the community that we crave and so we have set up these complicated computer mediated networks that simultaneously attempt to connect us yet safely keep us at arms length with each other. The answer is to simplify our lives, yet not abandon social media completely because there is a need for a Christian voice in this medium.

Let us not abandon these poor digital souls who do not know any better but to engage in empty relationships. Let us take pity on them and tell them instead there is a better way. Let us be a voice to the lost, let us draw them to our blogs so that we can be encouraged by our stats and the multitudes will know the truth and be informed that what they really want is a non-virtual relationship.

Yes...that paragraph is dripping with sarcasm.

The problem is that we are so conditioned by entertainment we use this as a background to interpret what is happening on social networks. By doing so, we limit the impact of social media to how many followers we have, and measure significance by audience. Consequently we completely miss the ministry point, and conference organizers continue to throw away precious Kingdom resources because we do not understand why our young people's smart phones are an extension of their arms.

Social media does not exist because people deeply desire community, social media exists as an expression of community. It is a place where people tell those they have a relationship with what is going on in their lives.

The primary motivation to joining a specific social networking site is friends. The biggest technological change efforts in the social media landscape is not how to build the largest audience, but how to segment your friends into relational circles, so that you can interact with only the group you intend to. Bringing a voice to this is like yelling in a digital wilderness. Additionally, teens are bombarded with so much data they cannot possibly take it all in. We do not win by merely contributing a voice to that onslaught of data. We win by being a part of a teen's offline network so that our online interactions are an extension and reflection of our existing offline relationship.

We win by listening to what people have to say.

Which leads me to wonder, how do you decide which voices to help navigate the social media wilderness do you listen to and why? How do you evaluate them?

Cyber Bullies Fueled By Sarcastic Abilities

Cyber bullying is a popular topic among adults who work with teens, and rightly so, nobody wants to see kids emotionally destroying one another. Its sad, it tugs at our heart and it motivates adults to step in before someone gets hurt. Cyber bullying is a complex issue with multiple levels of motivation mixed in with developmental limitations and inadvertent offenses. One very intentional ingredient though is sarcasm.

As early adolescents begin to think abstractly, the realization sets in that they have an ability to say one thing that implies something completely different. How cool is that! Its like discovering magic, and of course, practice makes perfect...

Give a kid a hammer and everything begins to look like a nail.

© Blotty | Dreamstime.com

Why sarcasm works is because it is a two sided coin. It tears someone else down while it appears to build someone else up. The majority of intentional cyber bullying activity occurs with a group of friends in front of a computer screen. Everyone wants to matter, but young teen girls constantly have their 'do you like me' radar on and this group of friends provide an unwitting audience to their cyber genius. Where off line bullying may end sooner because somebody sees the pain of the victim and eventually has the courage to step in, among more concrete thinking early adolescents, empathy for the victim will not come without intentional prodding. Someone who can think abstractly needs to connect the dots for a younger person who thinks more in the here and now.

Young teens do not intuitively have empathy for a person across a social network.

Educating young people can help, but it will not typically serve as an inhibitor for those who will choose to use sarcasm to cyber bully. Instead, we need to educate adults, equipping households with mental models that allows for adult awareness of and guiding participation with, adolescent Internet activity. Only adults living life online with their teens will help curb such a destructive behavior among early adolescents.

Questions: How have you seen or experienced the use of sarcasm to bully?

What are some ways that adults can be more aware of what teens are doing online?

What is the Floating Entourage Project?

The Floating Entourage Project is an effort to equip adults to utilize social media as an aspect of developing healthy adult-adolescent webs of relationships. This serves as a part of my final project for the Doctor of Ministry degree at Fuller Theological Seminary. As part of that effort, I am seeking Sacramento area churches that would be willing to host a seminar for parents and those who serve youth who are concerned about teen social media use. The seminar could be done in a single, 2 hour evening event or over two Sunday morning sessions. For the beta groups, there would be a pre and post survey as well as opportunities to share experiences in an online community. Please let me know if you are interested in participating.

For those seeking more ideas to connect with youth online please feel free to check back here often and participate in the discussions around how young people are using various social media tools. It is my hope that these blog postings serve to point you in the right direction and that your participation will help me understand how others view teen use of social media.

If you are interested, would you please take a few moments to fill out a survey before exploring this blog, and again after using it for at least a 4 week period of time? Thanks for you help, you can access the surveys here:

Pre-blog Survey

Thank-you for joining with me in this very important project,

Brad
March 20, 2012