Posts today over at Salon ("What's the Matter with Kids Today? Nothing, actually. Aside from our panic that the Internet is melting their brains") and SmartMobs ("A Poor Excuse for a Social Life") offer two different takes on one of the more interesting generational disjunctions in the way we perceive technology. The Salon piece argues that ubiquitous networks and information access, far from being a stupefying distraction, actually encourage a high degree of literacy and conversation among young people, and that the behaviors of consuming huge amounts of text-based media and writing discursively to friends in far-away places would draw no negative comment - indeed, would be seen as praiseworthy - if they were conducted in the analog world. The author argues that parents and older folks in general have mystified and mythologized the workings of the Internet and social networks, such that they have become a receptacle for traditional parental anxieties about the behavior of adolescents. Bottom line: if you are worried about behavior, worry about behavior and not the technology.

That view is supported in the SmartMobs piece by Marius Chitosca, who talks about a case where a shy teen is taunted by his more aggressive older brother and his friends for his "dedicated involvement with MySpace networking." He asks a couple of questions about the role of the online social network in this context:

Does it feel like a predator or a parasite on the back of the social networks in the real life? Does it provide a sanctuary in the face of bad real life relations with people? Is it a shy or handicapped people's substitute for not being able to build and manage a social network offline? Or can it go in harmony with what's outside the virtual environment, being a complementary tools and source altogether for practicing social skills, bonding more, learning more, having more fun and extending one's social networks?

It seems to me that this is simply a replay of timeless ritual of adolescent male dominance, humiliation, and social pressure. When I faced these kinds of situations during the "awkward years," my retreat was to comics, science fiction, and fantasy role-playing games (Dungeons & Dragons, etc.) - either solitary activities or rule-based recreation in collaboration with a tight circle of fellow outcasts. I also recall a fair amount of social handwringing among elders at the time about the negative effects of role-playing games, as if this particular outlet for the socially-awkward were somehow to blame for the uneven development of social skills among 12-15 year-old boys. If that's not putting the cart before the horse, then the phrase has no meaning.

The situations discussed in both of these pieces describe how older observers tend to overvalue the causative role of the medium of expression chosen by teens, leading to a predictable, almost comically stereotyped reaction of concern over the technology of the moment. This is natural: whatever teens of the moment are doing is new (to them). It's first in line to take the blamefor any worrisome departures from the values, priorities and traditional viewpoints that parents and teachers have tried to instill in the kids.

From the teens' point of view, however,the technology (or, more broadly, the medium) for personal expression, retreat, community, creativity and coming to an understanding of the world, is transparent and probably mostly irrelevant to the process of self-discovery. Young people may recognize novelty to some degree, but it rarely has the same threatening overtones it has to people who have a bigger vested interest in tradition and continuity. This is one reason why technology discussions between pre- and post-digital generations often produce misunderstandings. If you're a fish, you don't notice that you're surrounded by water.