Being Amber Rhea

Sherry wrote about her son who won’t stop playing those goddamn video games. She mused:

This got me to thinking about online social networking. I have friends that I text message more than I speak to. I have friends who will only engage in email conversations because they are too ‘busy’ for lunch meetings. Are we allowing our lives online to affect the way we see the world?

I am still a proponent that social media and the way the Internet is evolving is capable of making the world much better in a variety of ways, but perhaps we need a parent reminding us to stay focused on our priorities and make sure we maintain some sort of balance.

And in the comments, I replied:

Eh, I don’t know. This is the kind of thing the alarmists, haters, and curmudgeons always use to try to show that technology is ruining the world. But you know, there’s a HUGE difference between planting yourself in front of a computer/video game/whatever for hours at a time such that you neglect your other responsibilities (e.g., homework, chores, family time), and integrating technology into your life in a responsible way as a means of supporting or growing offline relationships.

Her kid playing X-Box all day long really isn’t about technology at all - it’s about a kid trying to get out of doing the shit he’s supposed to do. If it weren’t a video game, it would be something else. That’s what kids do, and that’s why they need parents to teach them that dog won’t hunt.

Unfortunately there are adults who exhibit, ahem, attentuated growth. You hear stories about people whose spouses spend almost every waking hour playing World of Warcraft instead of keeping up their half of the relationship. Or “porn addiction,” for that matter. It could be anything, really.

I think that’s where a lot of people get confused; they put the focus on the wrong thing. The particular technology in any situation isn’t what’s cause for concern; it’s the behavior.

Adults don’t need parents to remind them of their priorities. Adults need to take responsibility for their own damn lives; and if they don’t, well, there are consequences. That’s the way it goes.

Frankly, people who are constantly too “busy” to have lunch once in a while are obnoxious. I don’t want to be friends with someone who’s always got a cellphone plugged to their ear. But I also don’t want to be friends with someone who doesn’t pay attention to our friendship because of any other stupid activity.

Well, two things, actually; of which two blog posts this morning have reminded me.

1. The “Thirteen is trouble!!1!!! OMG!!1!!1″ thing. Veronica wrote about it. She says she felt insulted by it. So did I - especially because I was such a ridiculously well-behaved kid, all around. When people would start with that “ooooh the teenage years are the hard part!” crap, I would, like Veronica, want to behave like a crazy person, just because it seemed expected of me. But I never had the stones to actually do anything “bad.” And that made me annoyed with myself. But that’s another story. Anyway, the whole “teenagers are scary” thing always pissed me off because it seemed so dismissive, and made me feel like I was being set up for damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

2. The “make them do something they aren’t ready for” thing. Rootie wrote about it in passing, in a very touching post about her son’s 16th birthday. That bit stood out at me, though, as it always had; because from the time I was old enough to recognize myself as a sexual being, it always annoyed the shit out of me. And my annoyance only grew stronger as I got into my later teen years. Because, I was ready for that elusive “something.” And I was so frustrated at how girls were always cast as not being ready, and being pressured by boys who didn’t give a shit about their feelings; and boys were always cast as being ready at the drop of a hat, girls’ feelings be damned. There was nowhere that I fit in that script. The idea of a girl having active desires of her own, having agency, pursuing things she wanted, and - gasp! - at the same time being capable of recognizing others as people with feelings and desires of their own, was apparently beyond the pale. (Or, of course, girls were sluts. That was the other option. But again, it was all about them “letting” the boys “do things to them.” No agency. Always passive.)

And that’s what I think of that.