Two Big Picture Questions and Teacher’s Answers for Parents that Matter
for Teen Girls on Social Media
"No teen girl should be like an insect nymph getting
sustenance from the environment dominated by a Giant Clown Face. What kind of
organism would destroy its youth society through mind control before reaching
the adult stage? What kind of adulthood would result?"
Excerpt from Teen Girl Faces Time in the Sand
On a recent podcast show for parents I was asked a pointed
question upfront:
What is the one thing about you that would make parents want
to listen to you?
The answer was simple, drawn from a long background of pride
and achievement. I am a teacher, now retired, with 24 years of
teaching experience. I am a disciplined teacher with total faith in the teaching
principles such as asking questions, analyzing content, making a decision with
multiple viewpoints.
Good teaching
results in good learning such as comprehension, association, critical and creative
thinking. My main job as an educator was to show the Big Picture of any unit study
… how all the parts fit together to make any system function as a whole.
However, we are now faced with a new unprecedented unit of
study…it’s new, only 20 years old, it’s a technological revolution affecting
humanity. Social media has absorbed our communication systems for better or for worse.
As adults, with
wisdom, we can try to cope and handle the changes. But what about teenagers,
especially teen girls, how do they find their way without rules, discipline or
foresight? How do their adolescent brains
know what is right or wrong, dangerous or doable without consequences? What viewpoint
do they have to see the Big Picture of how social media has impacted their normal social
rites of passage and potential?
And so, I wrote this short e-book with a Big Picture. A teen
girl narrates her story of making some bad choices about Selfies and drugs
pointing to a symbol of the Social Media Circus impacting an adolescent brain
in a dream. She keeps asking, “Is it my
fault?” Her grannie helps to explain the
transition of time as experiences with symbols in the sand and the power of
choice made in reference to a timeline with 3 essential questions.
My deep fear is that young teen girls can find too much
sustenance on Social Media which can metamorphose into adult lifestyles that
defy cultural norms.
The second important question was: what is the most important
message you can give to parents? Such an important answer deserved two parts:
First, there is an image in the story that shocked me even
to think about it where symbols can mean so much more than words. One of the
main characters is a symbol of the Social Media Clown Face … a huge, amorphous,
hatch-tagged, cell-phone slinging organism that appears again and again. Another real symbol is the damselfly that represents the fragility of life and self-survival
skills of even the smallest being.
In the last chapter, the two symbols meet. The
teen girl relates to the damselfly nymphs that survive in their underwater
environment with their special appendages for many years only to emerge as
adults, to mate, lay eggs and die within weeks. The shocking image shows a
nymph with a teenager’s profile finding nourishment and sustenance from this
huge Social Media Clown face. The words ring loud and clear:
Yes,
perhaps, like a nymph, I, too, have struggled with my adolescent brain.
However, my food supply was scavenged from a giant clown face imposing
sexualized Selfies, trying to molt me into grand media impositions, a
classification where I never belonged. It never gave me the strength or
confidence as a child to metamorphose into a strong capable adult.
As a society, we need to take a closer look at this Big
Picture and what matters to our youth as they transition into adulthood to build a sustainable culture.
Second, parents always ask for advice about better ways to communicate
with teenagers in competition with social media. There is much advice to be
found on the internet. My best message, however, is to spend as much time as possible
with your teenager doing anything that doesn’t involve a cell phone in your
hand … making dinner, playing a game, helping a community project, building
a sandcastle. Since learning is based so much on experience
and repetition to form new pathways in the brain, it is so important to replace ONLINE time with
OFFLINE time together. It might even be fun enough to do again and again.
The heavy-duty social media wavelength is here to stay in
sickness and in health. What we all need is the key to better choices to value
our personal timeline as our most valuable commodity. This is the theme of the story called Teen Girl Faces Time in the Sand.
Ask yourself the same question: what is the one thing that
would make people want to listen to you?
Questions and comments are always important. For more
podcast questions check this blog. What other questions would you ask this
teacher? Challenge her experience because she is the first to admit she has never posted a Selfie!
Excerpt: "I idly trace a square shape in the slightly damp sand. Yes, I can call this yesterday … can't relive
it but learn from it. Fill it up so many
bad choices, so many regrets without the context of present and future. I was
so young to be powered by a rash and brash developing brain. I am now so much better
informed about new vocabulary and protection in our changing society.
.
Then,
something different, I trace a long deep line in the sand and mark off a short
section near the beginning. This is my
total lifeline and this very short segment shows my teenage years. Six short
years can make a profound difference on a long lifeline, that's for sure.
Now I draw a heavier more rippled line above my lifeline.
This, I think, is the internet's social media timeline. It is powerful and here to stay forever; but
I will not allow its size and influence to affect this small section of my life
called teen years. I will not fall into a hole created by the Media
monster."
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