Generation Like!!! How far will our kids go to be "Cool"?

Teaching grade 8 students puts me in a very intriguing position. I am dealing with an age group of kids who are very plugged in and internet savvy beyond our imagination. They not only have access to more content than our generation ever had access to but they are also now becoming some of the biggest producers of internet content. It has become a social media society and our kids are right in the middle of it. As a teacher and a parent, my job is to teach these kids to think critically about the content they are being presented with every day.

Every day our kids are inundated with messages about how the world expects them to be. How to look, how to act and how to engage with the rest of the world. The messages they are getting come from all sorts of places. There are value and belief messages that come through content such as music videos and movies. They see what it takes to be a “teen” in today’s society. The clothing and the products used both become the things that our kids want in order to be “cool”. This type of content has been going on for a long time but now there is the addition of a variety of social media.

Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram and Youtube are where these kids are finding the majority of their content these days. They can access anything they want with the click of a mouse or tap of a button. The content is more and more mature and the kids are becoming more and more desensitized. What concerns me as a teacher is when I hear my students talking about information they have been given online as if it is 100% factual. In many cases, these kids are easily swayed to a point of view and rarely take the time to look for another point of view or facts that actually confirm what they are being told. At the same time, I hear stories about some of the content they are watching. They talk about YouTubers like they are celebrities and in some ways these people are. Many of these YouTubers have huge followings with even hundreds of thousands of viewers tuning in to see what they will do next.

Kids these days are sharing more of themselves online than ever before. They are able to share a selfie instantly and get feedback just as fast. It’s this quest for acceptance and feedback that motivates many of these teens. After hearing some of these stories about what my students are watching and even things that my own kids were finding online I started to question why this content was so interesting and why young people were so eager to post online. I started to look into teens interactions online and look for research that had been done. My search led me to a thought-provoking documentary called “Generation Like”.

Generation LIke is a documentary that was released in 2014 by PBS as part of its Frontline documentaries show. The film describes how the way in which teens interact with the world has changed immensely and the ramifications of this change. It details young people's quest to be accepted with “likes” through social media. The documentary questions who is really in control of these platforms and who is driving social media, the teens who feel this new sense of empowerment of the marketers who in many ways are driving the content that these teens are viewing.

Thanks to social media, today’s teens are able to directly interact with their culture — artists, celebrities, movies, brands, and even one another — in ways never before possible. But is that real empowerment? Or do marketers still hold the upper hand?
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What amazed me when watching this documentary is how important a “like” was for young people today. The gratification that can come from someone telling you through the click of a button that your picture, story or any post is not only accepted but is liked. Likes are linked to happiness and therefore the more likes you acquire the happier you are. Kids are able to interact with their favourite stars through online forums and become super fans. Young people are able to express themselves in ways they have never been able to and they are being rewarded for it. Youtube stars are being born all the time as young people are being recognized for their ideas and content. What I struggle with is the quality and appropriateness of all of this content. While there are lots of young people online just sharing their thoughts and ideas with the world, there are also some young people that will do anything for a like.

One kid in the documentary has some great skateboarding content. His videos were so popular that he started getting sponsors from skateboard companies. He was doing very well with this but his following grew exponentially when he started creating and uploading his prank videos. He will do things that in many ways might be considered socially inappropriate and sometimes demeaning to women. The humour of these actions draws a large crowd of young people. Young people are becoming viral internet sensations and it is encouraging more and more young people to get involved in the game. What are the costs of this fame? What is the limit to what might be considered acceptable in the quest to build your brand?

I decided that this documentary was something that my students and their parents should take the time to watch and discuss. All too often, I was hearing in my own classroom that some of the stuff happening in these posts online was acceptable and funny. When did it become funny for an 11 year old kid to run up and pinch a woman on the butt? Is this becoming a normalized thing for our young people? Are these the messages we want these kids growing up on? Many of their value and belief messages are coming from online content.

We had some great discussions in my class about the documentary. We discussed not only the usage of social media in the video but we also discussed my student's current usage. It was interesting to learn how accurately the video portrayed the online social media world for them. We discussed the importance of thinking critically about what we are watching and seeing and about how the things we put online are there forever. It was an eye-opening experience for many of my students. The feedback from parents was very positive and they appreciated the attempt being made to educate their children about some of the dangers of our online interactions.

I know that the activity had a positive impact on many students and I think/hope that they are taking the time to stop and think about both what they see online and what they personally post. As long as they are living in a world where they are so engaged with social media teachers and parents will need to be diligent about educating young people about how to interact with these mediums.

Watch the entire documentary "Generation Like" here on PBS

By: @broncofan99

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