You're punished! Go to your room!!For those people who spent my childhood years throughout the Leave-It-To-Beaver or Brady-Bunch generations, these words resonate being an all-too familiar admonishment for any wrong doings of Theodore Cleaver, Jan Brady and countless other kids in the usa. It turned out the everyday penalty for the common misdeeds of waking time. And being banished to the lonely solitude of this bedroom, isolated from one's best freinds and family, was obviously a powerful and effective consequence. Yet for today's youth, being sent to one's room would be met without greater than a shrug on the shoulders. Actually, most kids would possibly be confused by their parents' punishment number of sentencing those to the best comfortable, pleasurable and socially connected placed in their entire world - his or her bedrooms.Nowadays it's clich? to show that today's youth is the most socially connected and culturally aware generation in mankind's history. The facts bear out might know about already intuitively know: these students are wired in. Over 85% of teens have their own mobile devices. For kids between ages 10 and 14, mobile ownership exceeds two-thirds. Three-quarters of babies between the ages of 8 and 18 have TV's inside their rooms, as well as the rate of bedroom TV's for the kids under 12 is 55%, and growing fast. Regarding computers, we all know that (at least) one-third of kids have their own own desk-tops or lap-tops with Internet access. And this doesn't count the "smart phones," or "X-Box Live" systems (for you to merrily engage in simulated mortal warfare with a fellow teenager somewhere in, say, Europe).Now, lest you feel this information is on the verge of offer some preachy lecture on poor parenting skills inside modern cyber era, allow me to reassure you, it may not be. Naturally, that could be an awesome hypocrisy for someone much like me since there could be no greater type of the trend towards electronic overki ll versus bedrooms of my personal three teenage sons. In fact, our kids' digital excesses are very daunting that we're less worried about more common concerns of cyber bullying, lack of sleep and sedentary lifestyle issues than My business is about merely entering their rooms without becoming entangled and electrocuted. Actually, the past time I saw such overburdened electrical outlets is in Chevy Chase's Christmas Vacation.The New Web sitesThe startling the truth is our youngsters are most connected to their unique friends as well as the outside world if they're in their very own bedrooms. The second they step foot outside their rooms, they become instantly less connected. It is no wonder we have more difficulty prying them from them rooms than sending these to their rooms. This is the complete reversal versus prior generations who needed to leave the privacy with their rooms to catch a peek at any current events whatsoever. Dr. Ron Taffel, a prominent child psychologist, w rote a novel with this very subject referred to as Second Family. It's subtitle aptly summed up his topic: Working with Peer Power, Popular culture, The Wall Of Silence -- And Other Challenges Of Raising Today's Teens. (I wondered, having a title this way, how could he not have outsold the Gideon's Bible?)Taffel asserts - possesses the data and clinical observations to back it up - why these technological advances have dramatically altered the sphere of influence for today's youth. Specifically, whereas in prior generations the main influences were parents, siblings, friends, teachers and prime-time television, today's primary influences are friends, popular culture, instantaneous news information, and.....friends, again (in that order). This is the modern sphere of influence - mainly the buddies and also the pop culture - that Taffel calls "The Second Family." For that reason, the so-called "First Family" (that's us) continues to be rendered less highly relevant to today's kids. For your children virtually have everything else but needed right at their fingertips (literally) while perched comfortably with their beds or desk chairs. They may be with the helm of "Planet Youth," as Taffel would rather think of it as, and are generally in complete control.When all of us too depressed, Taffel tells us that it is not a sociological disaster for your human race. It's merely progress down the procedure for evolution. In truth, he supplies a basic strategy to our parental plight to become detached and irrelevant. This is simply that many of us should learn in order to create an "empathic envelope" around our little ones; basically, we've got to become technologically and culturally accessed "their" world by utilizing "their" Internet, watching "their" YouTube, following "their" music and playing "their" X-treme sports. In completing this task, in the end could end up a tad offended including a bit bruised up, we would not less than join in on "their" S ocial media.Technology could have redefined this is of "Social Network," though the concept is really as old since the people itself. The drive to become attached to other individuals can be a basic instinct of our own species, which is hard-wired into our behavior as social animals. We're also unavoidably influenced by one for contentment, sustenance and survival. We operate by way of the basic sociological principle that as social beings were naturally driven to outlive, therefore we know that our survival is most beneficial achieved by operating cooperatively in groups. Thus were going to seek solutions to come together in such groups - in families, clans, tribes, communities, nations - to higher our mutual existence. As well as any threat to the next group existence is going to be met together with the reactive forces of the group. The instinct for group connectivity and group survival supersedes all.It is just a RevolutionTechnology has put a new face on what we "social animals" operate as cooperative groups from the modern era. Teenagers give to us an up to date close-up of how these tight groups - a.k.a. "Second Families" - may be formed without worrying about teens hardly leaving the confines with their individual bedrooms. And the world currently is seeing other powerful an example of cooperative group dynamics being played out via technological means.At the risk of elevating Mark Zuckerberg's ego any higher (he's the 30-year-old billionaire who founded Facebook, and was subject from the recent movie, The Online community), there is no political pundit alive that would deny the pivotal role that Facebook, Twitter and other social media tools have took part in the recent uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and various revolutionary hot spots around the globe. As Newsweek recently observed, "in Iran the large demonstrations of 2009 have migrated in today's world, where activists spread the term of resistance via instant message, satellite televi sion on pc, and what authorities fear most: social media." Young Iranian revolutionaries are usually not taking to your streets to effect historic change, they can be taking thus to their keyboards to accomplish this in your house.On top, comparing the American teenage "Second Family" on the revolutions in the Middle East seems trite or else absurd. But look at this: more common denominator for both phenomena would be the power of "the group." The so-called "social network" will not be a novice to teenagers or revolutionaries. It's always powered both forces. The microchip merely put a different face onto it all.So in any components of our existence we need to respect the power of the group. Just in case for no reason heed that lesson, not less than heed this one: when you'd like handy out a punishment, don't say, "Go for a room!"
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