You're punished! Go to your room!!For all of us who spent my youth during the Leave-It-To-Beaver or Brady-Bunch generations, these words resonate as an all-too familiar admonishment with the wrong doings of Theodore Cleaver, Jan Brady and millions of other kids in America. It absolutely was more common penalty for any common misdeeds through the day. And being banished towards lonely solitude of your bedroom, isolated from one's family, would be a powerful and effective consequence. Yet for today's youth, being brought to one's room is met without any more than a shrug in the shoulders. In fact, most kids may possibly be confused by their parents' punishment collection of sentencing the crooks to by far the most comfortable, pleasurable and socially connected set up their entire world - their particular bedrooms.At this point it's clich? expressing that today's youth is one of socially connected and culturally aware generation in mankind's history. The stats bear out that which you already intuitively know: these youngsters are wired in. Over 85% of teens have their own cellular phones. For kids between ages 10 and 14, cellular telephone ownership exceeds two-thirds. Three-quarters of youngsters between the ages of 8 and 18 have TV's within their rooms, and also the rate of bedroom TV's for children under 12 is 55%, and growing fast. For computers, we know that (not less than) one-third of kids get their own desk-tops or lap-tops with Internet connection. And therefore doesn't count the "smart phones," or "X-Box Live" systems (where one can merrily participate in simulated mortal warfare having a fellow teenager somewhere in, say, Europe).Now, lest you think this information is intending to offer some preachy lecture on poor parenting skills from the modern cyber era, i want to reassure you, it's not. After all, that you will find a fantastic hypocrisy for somebody at all like me since there can be no greater example of the popularity towards electronic overkill than the bedrooms of by myself three teenage sons. Actually, our kids' digital excesses are incredibly daunting that we're less concerned about the everyday concerns of cyber bullying, insomnia and sedentary lifestyle issues than We're about merely entering their rooms without becoming entangled and electrocuted. To be honest, the very last time I saw such overburdened electrical outlets was in Chevy Chase's Christmas Vacation.The brand new Internet sitesThe startling truth is which our students are most attached to his or her friends along with the rest of the world when sitting in their particular bedrooms. The instant they step foot away from their rooms, they become instantly less connected. It's no surprise we now have more difficulty prying them from their rooms than sending those to their rooms. That is a complete reversal versus prior generations who necessary to leave the privacy of their total rooms merely to catch a peek at any current events in any way. Dr. Ron Taffel, a prominent child psychologist, wrote the sunday paper for this very subject referred to as the Second Family. It's subtitle aptly summed up his topic: Managing Peer Power, Pop Culture, The Wall Of Silence -- Along with other Challenges Of Raising Today's Teens. (I wondered, using a title that adheres to that, how could he not have access to outsold the Gideon's Bible?)Taffel asserts - and it has the information and clinical observations to support it - the technological advances have dramatically altered the sphere of influence for today's youth. Specifically, whereas in prior generations the key influences were parents, siblings, friends, teachers and prime-time television, today's primary influences are friends, popular culture, instantaneous news information, and.....friends, again (for the reason that order). It is this modern sphere of influence - mainly the chums as well as the pop culture - that Taffel calls "The Second Family." Subsequent ly, the so-called "First Family" (that's us) may be rendered less tightly related to today's kids. As your kids just about except time they need right at their fingertips (literally) while perched comfortably on their beds or desk chairs. These are for the helm of "Planet Youth," as Taffel likes to refer to it, plus they're in complete control.To start with we get too depressed, Taffel informs us that your is not a sociological disaster to the people. It's merely progress along side means of evolution. The fact is, he comes with a basic way to our parental plight to become detached and irrelevant. As well as it simply that we should learn to build an "empathic envelope" around our; to paraphrase, we should become technologically and culturally used "their" world through the use of "their" Internet, watching "their" YouTube, enjoying "their" music and playing "their" X-treme sports. In doing so, basically we will finish up a tad offended and a bit bruised up, we'd at least pa rticipate in "their" Online community.Technology could possibly have redefined this is of "Social Network," even so the concept can be as old because mankind itself. The drive to get linked to other humankind is often a basic instinct individuals species, in fact it is hard-wired into our behavior as social animals. I am unavoidably established by each other for contentment, sustenance and survival. We operate by the basic sociological principle that as social beings we're also naturally driven to live, and then we be aware that our survival 's best achieved by operating cooperatively in groups. Thus we're determined to seek ways to work together in these groups - in families, clans, tribes, communities, nations - to enhance our mutual existence. And then any threat fot it group existence are going to be met using the reactive forces on the group. The instinct for group connectivity and group survival supersedes all.It is a RevolutionTechnology has put a different face on ho w we "social animals" operate as cooperative groups within the modern era. Teenagers give us a contemporary close-up of how these tight groups - a.k.a. "Second Families" - is often formed with no teens hardly leaving the confines of the individual bedrooms. Along with the world is now seeing other powerful instances of cooperative group dynamics being played out via technological means.For the chance of elevating Mark Zuckerberg's ego any higher (he's the 30-year-old billionaire who founded Facebook, and was subject on the recent movie, The Social Network), there isn't a political pundit alive who deny the pivotal role that Facebook, Twitter and also other web 2 . 0 tools have played in the current uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt as well as other revolutionary hot spots over the world. As Newsweek recently observed, "in Iran the huge demonstrations of 2009 have migrated nowadays, where activists spread the idea of of resistance via instant message, satellite television, and what authorities fear most: web 2 . 0." Young Iranian revolutionaries usually are not taking towards the streets to effect historic change, they may be taking for their keyboards to take action at home.Outside the body, comparing the American teenage "Second Family" to the revolutions in between East seems trite otherwise absurd. But picture this: the most popular denominator for both phenomena may be the power of "the group." The so-called "social network" just isn't a new comer to teenagers or revolutionaries. It really is powered both forces. The microchip merely put a brand new face on there all.So in all of the areas of our existence we ought to respect the potency of the group. Of course, if we do not heed that lesson, at the very least heed this blog: when you need at hand out a punishment, don't say, "Go to your room!"
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