How Technology is Shaping Youth Culture

In reviewing the definite impact technology is having on our youth, our minds can easily become fixated on the negatives because of how prevalent they are. Sexting, virtual sex, streaming pornography and the easy ability to meet strangers online are all new realities made possible by the technology era.

Yet technology brings positives as well. Remote and online education programs are typically more flexible and more feasible. The large availability of data from various resources leads to more comprehensive research and more conclusive findings.

The exposure to different cultures and ways of thinking leads to greater tolerance and there are countless income generating opportunities for young writers, programmers and online entrepreneurs.

Let us look at the different facets of a teenager’s life and consider technology’s influence and try to identify the picture that is developing.

Home & Family

Children are now requesting laptops, tablets, cell phones and video games at younger ages and the increasing sales of these devices every Christmas shows that their parents are listening.

However children are not the only ones affected. Technology has changed the way of living and working for parents. Thanks to the internet and the many mobile platforms, parents can easily work from home. While this is still highly romanticized and touted as giving parents ‘more time at home with the kids’, what it really translates into is parents who are always working at home.

Even when not working, parents may tend to recreate online, visiting social media sites or playing online games.

What this means is that many people who share a home, very rarely share quality time together. Each person is plugged into their own device.

“Alone Together” is a phenomenon that psychoanalyst Sherry Turkle explores in her book of the same name and she discusses among several things, the sense of community and connection people now derive and expect from technology while expecting less from each other in person.

School & Education

For a long time the book was synonymous with education. That is no longer so. The nails on the coffin for books were firmly secured the minute the advanced search engine was created. Spending hours poring through the pages of various texts is simply archaic and a waste of time.

To make matters worse for the book lovers, the search engine’s results are also not only limited to text. Videos provide visual instruction and present opportunities to easily learn new skills without attending a course or institution of learning.

Education providers therefore are forced to change with the times and provide more visually stimulating computerized environments to engage young minds.

What this means or rather strongly suggests, is that the brains of the young have been rewired somewhat. The old linear, sequential manner of processing information as is encouraged by book reading has been retired. Emphasis is now placed on information gathering skills which focus on how to skim large quantities of data from multiple sources and retrieve what is pertinent. Memory retention is also not as important as critical analysis.

Technology writer, Nicholas Carr has greatly supported this notion in his book “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains”. He states:

“...the argument is that online activities—surfing, searching, jumping from e-mail to text—actually change the nature of the brain. The more time we spend online, the more we are incapable of quiet reverie, not because of habits of mind but because of a rewiring of our circuitry.”

Pop Culture and Celebrity Stardom

The effects on this may still be downplayed by a media that does not yet wish to lose their venerated cash cows in Hollywood. However it stands to reason that the ability for anyone to become a star by posting a YouTube video displaying their talent will affect the perception of stardom.

Fullscreen, Inc. is a company which helps to finance videos for young creators, from any part of the world. According to their CEO, George Strompolos, any teenager with a web camera who can connect with an audience can become a millionaire and they have helped to create several. These internet stars, which are generally unknown to those over the age of 30, have their own substantial fan base and following and they can come from any part of the world.

What this means is that firmly rooted into the psyche of the new emerging youth culture is that you don’t need to go to New York or Hollywood to become famous. Literally anyone from anywhere can be a star.

Money and Careers

Online entrepreneurship is booming and even among the young. Almost anyone who has access to a computer can create a blog and again once the content is engaging, once a niche market can be found, money can be made. There’s also money in selling photography, web programming, affiliate marketing, virtual outsourcing to brick and mortar companies and of course these skills can be acquired – online!

What this means is the traditional way of making money, following the path of school, college and ‘5 day a week’ job is being booted out along with books. Anyone can make a lot of money at any age and from anywhere.

Views on Politics

For many people, religion and politics are hallmarks of what define you as an individual and are what gives you a sense of stability and belonging within a community. However a young person’s community is no longer just the people he physically meets in his neighbourhood at church, temple or mosque but rather anyone in cyberspace who share his interests.

In times past, governments attempted to control people’s thinking by controlling the media. Technology has severely compromised this control because for example, it is hard to gobble up the sensational media coverage of terrorism when video footage of serene images pop up for a region reportedly under bomb and gun fire.

2011 is recorded in history as the year of major social media organized uprisings. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube all played roles in the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria and Bahrain as well as the Occupy Movements in the United States. Quite worthy of mention is the sharing of lessons learnt between the different activist groups such as when Tunisian Facebook users advised their Egyptian peers to ‘Put vinegar or onion under your scarf for tear gas’.

The London rioters used another telecommunications channel - the Blackberry Messenger service.

What this means is that young people are aware of the potential that technology offers and have been exposed to the power it can wield to influence political events. Various governments have responded by limiting and controlling internet usage and have even at times blocked cell phone connectivity. This response however has only pushed the younger innovative minds to go underground as there are talks of a new ‘off-the-grid’ network.

Views on Religion and God

I am from the Caribbean and most everyone I know attends church, mosque or temple and practice some fundamental religion but yet here I am belonging to the Light Body Travelers community, exploring energy work and practising meditation. I may not belong to the age bracket defined by William May when he introduced our focus on Youth Culture but I can see how the expansion of my views was partially affected by technology.

It is relatively hard to simply accept that those who don’t believe in God the way you do are doomed to hell’s fire when you have the opportunity to meet and interact with so many different people across various cultures.

The internet also provides easy accessibility to many holy books and teachings online, and discussion forums where one can be exposed to different dissecting views.

What this means is that young people have a unique opportunity to develop more comprehensive world views and are abandoning old dogmas and prejudices. Consider Will Smith’s children who are reading quantum physics and books such as “The Ancient Secret of the Flower of Life”.

In fact I believe that religion is slowly but surely being replaced by a more all-inclusive, earth conscious spirituality.

Views on Love

The children growing up in smart homes and heavily computerized environments are also the children of an alarmingly growing percentage of divorced parents. For many of those whose parents are still together, they watch them argue and fight and spend little to no time having meaningful interactions. And these are people who fell in love after growing up in the same neighbourhood or attending the same college.

On the other hand, these young people go online and can find someone they can connect with. This person shares similar world views and likes the same things they do. Thanks to video calling capabilities, they can see each other and fall in love from half way across the world.

For many, the hours spent texting and chatting long distance strengthens their sense of a soul connection and their belief in a ‘one true soul-mate’ or twin flame. The reality however is sometimes painfully disastrous.

What this means is that young people no longer see themselves as limited to only finding love or casual friendships in their physical location. Some of these ‘too good to be true’ relationships unfortunately are exactly that, which means that there is also a growing dissatisfaction with love regardless of where is found. They yearn for something deeper, something more real, truer even. Something connected to spirit perhaps?

So What Does This All Mean?

There are many articles that speak to the real psychological problems of depression and narcissism among young people who feel the need to constantly check how many likes their latest ‘selfie’ photo has garnered. Cyberbullying has been directly linked to some teenage suicides and suicide attempts, and online sexual predators do prey on the gullible young.

However there are those who hold more optimistic views as far as technology and the young are concerned. Carr believes that there is an ‘incipient Net backlash’ which will be led by the idealistic young. Blogger Manel Blanco adds a spiritual element and sees the internet as ‘a platform in which we can create energetic webs’ that can help to raise consciousness. My view embraces these two.

I believe that a consciousness revolution is imminent and its rumblings are already starting.  I believe that this consciousness revolution will look a lot like Adam Bucko’s and Matthew Fox’s Occupy Spirituality and I believe that it will eventually lead to us discarding the internet. We simply won’t need it, not when telepathy, soul travel, acute intuition and psychic abilities all become available to us at higher levels of consciousness.

The off grid network that people currently seek has always existed and technology is nothing but a prelude to all this. We have arrived at the ‘the technological simulation of consciousness’ that Marshall McLuhan spoke of and it is only a matter of time before we recognize that the simulation is nothing but a poor imitation.

I believe too that it is the young - the ones who recognise the archaic uselessness of our current systems; the ones who are breaking down mental, religious and financial barriers; the ones whose brains are being trained for higher analytical thinking; the ones who have felt the pinch of being ‘together and yet alone’ and who are looking for a love that is real and spiritual - will be the ones leading the way.

What do you think?

-Elizabeth Energy

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