a generation lost inside of technology advancement

Not too long ago in our history families lived together. If not together in the same house, they most often lived close by one another. They relied on each other to survive and to thrive as a unit. Children knew their grandparents as more than someone they saw a few times a year {or once every few years}. They knew to respect their elders. They understood that with age comes wisdom and with that wisdom should come respect. With age comes more responsibility until a certain age and then age meant enjoying time with family.

I am always aware of my surroundings. I notice who is near me, behind me, in front of me, etc. If i notice an elderly person looking at an item that is on the top shelf of the store, i will go up to them and ask them if they need help getting an item down. Most of the time they are gracious and will make a joke about not being as young as they use to be. I always hold the door open for someone who is older than me {younger than me too}. Ok, i pretty much hold the door for anyone i see walking in behind me.

Whenever i help an elderly person my kid will ask me, "do you know that person?" to which i will say, "nope." and then she will respond, "oh. then why did you help them?" and i will explain to her that it is polite to help those who are elderly.

We have engrained in our children "Stranger Danger!" and they have taken it to the extreme. There is a valuable lesson in explaining to them to not talk to or trust strangers, but it also means they will never communicate with pretty much anyone they do not know. They will never help anyone, or take a chance to be overly nice to people they do not know. They are, for lack of a better word, afraid.

On a whole, most children of this generation have minor relationships with their grandparents. There are a few lucky ones who will spend time making lasting memories with their grandparents on a simpler level doing things that mean more than just seeing them for a few minutes at a time during the holidays. Unfortunately most children will come to know their grandparents through the use of technology. And admittedly i am glad for the technologies that we have now, but i think that it does harm family relationships...

People do not get together like they use to because they see every second of someone's life on Facebook and/or Twitter. If you know every detail of your families life, what is the point in getting together with them to "catch up" all the time? When you do get together it isn't very exciting to share news, because they already know the news. And yes, there are pros and cons to letting people keep up with you online. They are able to be more in your life then perhaps they were before. Families are busy and the use of online communications is a big help for making sure everyone knows everything at the same time. My main issue is the grandparents keeping up with the grandkids with the use of FB. It just seems un-natural to me on certain levels.

Kids should communicate with their grandparents, this is true, but the way they communicate has changed to a way that i do not agree with. I appreciate that grandparents are trying to keep up with the younger generation, but i do not recall my grandparents calling me up on the phone to "chat" when i was growing up. On a birthday or holiday we might have passed the phone around for a few seconds at a time to say hello to the ones that lived out of state... but on a whole we communicated during visits. We would sit down and have a long talk to catch up. It was laid back, it was fun and it was memorable. Now that the grandparents know every detail of the grandkids lives from online social communities.... what's to talk about come visit time?

nothing. there is nothing left to really talk about. which makes the visits less interesting for the kids, less memorable, and they feel less of a close relationship with their grandparents.

This is one of the main reasons i gave up Facebook. Everyone knew my entire life, my daily life, my minute-by-minute life, and all the news i had to share. There was no joy in telling people things anymore. And it turned visits with people into kind of boring trips of just sitting around. The same goes for photos. i use to print out my photos and take albums and sit and talk about what things were in my albums. Now people just go online and see everyones photos and it just isn't the same.

times are changing, and although i enjoy these changes for myself, i think it is changing the dynamics of the family... and not at all for the better. The generation of our children being born today - the last 15 years are being lost in the online world. And the generation of their grandparents are being lost because of a lack of real, and lasting communications with their children and grandchildren.

what we write today, our grandchildren might read tomorrow.

Left to right: Unknown relatives Dell, Larry and Susie.

My great-grandfather {holding unknown baby} my great grandmother & my great aunt Markita

what will be left of what we say online in 100 years? 1,000 years? will our great-great-great-grandchildren read our tweets on whatever hand held device is out there. will there be an app for that? will they download photos we took today and wonder what we were like?


I've spent the last 9 months {off and on} researching my heritage. it doesn't give me much. a photo here, and a photo there... but no stories on the people who i am looking at in the photo. there are no letters, no journals, no tweets, no blogs, no e-mails. just bits and pieces of information about people in my families past.

wouldn't it be great to know what they were really like. I have my grandfather's eyes, but do I share his sense of humor or his work ethic? was he an adventurous person with a love of travel? was he worried as a father, as a grandfather or even as a child? Did my grandmother regret leaving her kids behind to be raised by another woman? Did she wear her heart on her sleeve or have the world on her shoulders or perhaps she was just a gypsy like personality and brushed everything off and moved onto the next adventure without pause or regret.

there are so many questions that will go un-answered in my quest for knowing who my relatives of the past were in their life. but as I sit here wondering... I can't help but think that perhaps one day there will be someone looking at a photo of me wondering who I was in life. And perhaps that person will have something more to go on... like this blog or my flickr or some trace of my online life will be there for them to see.

so, as I always tell my daughter... do not say or post something online you wouldn't want your grandmother... or one day, your grandchildren to see!

age limit for kids online?

We live in an online world these days. I could see this back in 1995 when i got my first Window's based computer and went online and started my first website (it was cheesy!). But the world that we live in is quickly moving to a world where kids NEED to know about the online world at a much younger age.

Claire was playing online at Playhouse Disney when she was 3. She could turn on the computer, she could open the Internet, and she could type in enough of the web URL that the rest would pop up and she would then click on the link to take her to Playhouse Disney.com. She had and used her own e-mail account starting at age 3. She had her own website (still does, its just not up at the moment) at the age of 2 and by the age of 4 she was helping me design it and work it. She had her own twitter at the age of 8. She had her own Facebook by the age of 9 and the list continues to grow.

i have many friends who shelter their kids from the online world thinking that it will protect their kids. My wonder in their thinking is this, Protect them from what? It is true that the world is a big place and the internet brings it right to your doorstep. But it is also true that if you are a good parent you can still shelter them from the world online by being a positive influence and by keeping tabs on what they are doing. I have not had any issues to date with Claire being online. she is 10 and still growing in her love of the internet.

For me it was the simple fact that the internet is the wave of the future. Heck, it is the wave of the NOW! If your kid doesn't get small doses of it during their youth, when they do get the ability to be online they will go over-board and perhaps feel lost. I'm not saying let your kid loose online and find their way to a porn website! but giving them their own e-mail account to connect with friends and family near and far,

following.

Thorns

recently i have grown to feel much like this image. i feel as if i need to protect myself from those who wish to steal the beauty in which i hold dear to me. Not only metaphorically speaking, but truly. i have put myself out there for those who i trusted... i have been burned more times than i wish to count. so today i woke up at 6am and laid there pondering why?

i have a quote on my sticky notes wall "if it doesn't make you happy, then why are you doing it? Who are you doing it for?" i have no idea where i saw the quote because i didn't write that part down (if it was said by you, tell me and i will give you credit).

but this made me think about all of my "social networking" sites that i visit and take part in. does it make me any happier to put up a status update? no. does it make me any happier to see a new person following me on twitter? no. does it make me happier if people i do not know follow my blog? no.

So if not, then why?

i pulled myself out of bed and took a look at my twitter followers. over 300 people. i went through the list, one by one. There were people selling porn - deleted! there were people selling things i didn't want to buy - deleted. there were people who said creepy things and/or looked creepy - deleted! there were bots (look it up if you don't know) - deleted. there were people who were following ONLY me (creepy!!!) - deleted! there were people that just looked like they were up to no good - deleted.

i could go on, but i deleted over 100 people that i didn't want to have follow my every move online. i also recently had been thinking about the kids i grew up with and how i am their friend on FB. i have not seen or heard from many of these people since i was a young child. Good to connect, sure. But i do not honestly know these people. Do i really want them seeing my status updates? Do i want them knowing that i am having a difficult time right now? Do i want them seeing all of the photos i take of my family? Complete strangers knowing my every life move... all because i happened to know them when i was a young child?

We protect what we love. We shelter it, we give it love and we teach ourselves to be cautious of those around us at all times. How do you protect yourself from something you can not see? Do you know how many times a stranger has looked at your photos? Do you set your photos up on FB to be seen ONLY by those you are friends with, friends of friends, or everyone? Do you honestly know all of your friends- friends and trust that they are not scary people who might wish to harm you or your family?

Yesterday i took Claire all alone, just me, to the Farmers Market two towns over. i gave her the "remember to stick with me" speech to which i got a sassy response of "i'm 10... i know!" So that put me into major mom mode and a lecture about the "stranger danger" ensued.

Here, we are all alone. Here, i have no one to call upon if i get into danger or trouble. Here, we are surrounded by hundreds of strangers whenever we go anywhere. Not 1 familiar face in the crowd.

So how do you get to that point of... enough? My life is MY life and not to be shared with the entire world?

i share because i want those that i care about to keep up with us while we are living 3,000 miles away.
i share because i want to not be closed off from the world.
i share because i enjoy sharing.

but i think there is a limit to which we share and who we share with.

following strangers.

i came across this blog years ago. And i started to read the daily life of a complete stranger. They have a husband who is a musician in Tennessee who also had a blog. I followed a link onto myspace and became their "friend" on myspace too. i came across their flickr photos and took a moment or two to flip through their images. and then i managed to forget all about these people, because lets face it - i do not know them!

Today out of nowhere, with a random thought of them, i recalled these people and looked up their blog. They have it now blocked from outside viewing. it made me a little sad to not be able to see how they were doing. then i remembered their myspace page name (because i cleaned out my friends long ago and only kept the people i actually knew on my list or my very favorites). And there they both were. Two people i've never met, but feel like i know as well as my own "real" online friends. They had new blogs and new photos of her modeling career (she's now a blonde!) and new music to listen to. It was interesting to come across a page full of so much information about people i find interesting in their live, but who i've never actually met.

i wonder if people know, or care, that strangers are reading their information? Do they only put out there what they want other people to know about them? Are they even being their true self or just an act for the sake of the viewers? Should i feel strange that i follow complete strangers lives online?! Or is that the world that we now live in... half truths and half lives online. Does anyone actually really know a person IN PERSON anymore or have we gone to the way of technology communication only?

Some of my friends that i have not seen in years, i now know them again online. And does that mean that we are "friends" again? No. We talk, but only in random short messages. Not a true conversation. There is no "eye to eye" conversation. So to call someone online a true friend, is that fair?

These are things that i find interesting about where the world is now going. Maybe its time to take a step back and remember to just have a friend for the sake of having a friend in person. Nothing online, no exchange of e-mail address' or facebook friendships... just real world only. Can it even be done?!