Newsflash: young people are not suspicious and cynical
Saturday, October 27th, 2007I have spent this Saturday at the Battle of Ideas at the RCA. I am pleased to say that I managed to steer myself away from my usual favourite topics of religion and politics and attended some sessions on issues of privacy, technology and our old chum web 2.0.
Today’s great revelation was that apparently “young people” have a different approach to public vs private i.e. there is no private, especially when it comes to social networking sites. People allegedly post personal information and incriminating evidence all the time, stuff which might well come back to haunt them, and are unaware of the potential repercussions.
Although I realised during the course of the session that I don’t actually know anyone under the age of 30 (who is not under 5 anyway) that I could verify this with, I am still suspicious of this claim. Apart from implying that 15 year olds are all a bunch of naive idiots, it suggests that teenagers are not cynical and suspicious of the world at large.
Surely these traits can’t be unique to older generations, or even just me? I mean what’s the world coming to when young people don’t even expect other people to screw them over?!!? That’s your job when you’re a teenager - assuming that everyone’s out to get you.
