Growing-Up Today

I got an e-mail yesterday from “the over 40 crowd” which includes 3 of my 4 parents as well as many other people I interact with on a daily basis. It said, in great stuck-up detail how “You kids today have got it too easy. You're spoiled rotten! You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in 1970 or any time before!”

So here’s from us, the generation alive and breathing. The kids you obviously know nothing about. Because I believe that you wouldn’t last even one minute of my everyday life. You think we have it so easy? Here, I’ll give you some perspective:

1.      We have the internet; we also are then required to stay up to date with it. We are expected to know it all because we have the information at our fingertips. Students now can’t survive without it, it’s not possible. Imagine if you were told you had to buy a $1000 computer just to start the education that you can’t afford and will spend the next 20 years paying back. And you think you had it hard? I know I will have to replace that puppy in 2 years when the hardware can’t keep up with the software updates!

2.      And you think e-mail gives us anything? Hate to break it to you, but e-mail is so yesterday. We have video conferencing and Facebook and Google+ to learn now. Imagine, back when you were young learning something lasted a bit longer didn’t it? And we all figure it out on our own because to be quite frank, you ripe old folks are no help at all.

3.      Here’s another one, you think child protective services makes us soft? We have a much more difficult task of guarding our words. There’s no getting out of it if it went up on Facebook. Or if anyone else put it up on the internet. Nowhere is safe, we could always get caught! Even for things that happened months or years ago! Did you ever have to worry like that? I didn’t think so. And besides, they don’t protect us from the pressure we live with every day. The people I know who *haven’t* had some run in with self mutilation, can be counted on one hand. And you think you know us?!? HA!

4.      You say call waiting is fancy crap, but we pay out our butts for it. Ever been told that you’re not good enough because you didn’t buy something? My cell phone doesn’t have internet access but it’s expected by everyone including my teachers that it does. You just had to read to keep up with your classmates, I have to bend over backward for the new thing I don’t have!

5.      And here’s another thing, you call us lazy or whatever for being online all the time. I have the best job a teen could ever hope for because I’m good with Facebook and twitter and Photoshop and Dreamweaver and probably a half dozen other programs you know nothing about. You’re paying me because I have the ability to keep up with it. Keep complaining because if you don’t start learning I’d love to keep taking your money.

6.      You say we’re annoying because of our cell phones? Did you ever experience that moment as a kid that you were left totally out of it and all of a sudden your friends have an inside joke you missed and suddenly you’re not in with your own crowd anymore? I’m sure you did, we all do. But for us? That could happen at any second, it will! We live in a social environment that is physically impossible to keep up with. You call it annoying, we call it survival. Besides, I’m sure you never had to live under the constant fear of having your entire identity hacked when you were in middle school!! I’ll bet you didn’t even know what identity theft was when you were in seventh grade.

7.      Who has time to watch cartoons? I’d be willing to guess you didn’t have the notion that if you aren’t the best you aren’t good enough pounded into you since birth. Ever been told that if you don’t go to college you’ll have to be a prostitute? How about all the time from peers and adults alike? Yeah, you tell me how you would have survived with that hanging over your entire childhood. I think not.

8.      I am personally $49,843.05 in debt to the government (as of March 17, 2012) because of you people. And you thought having to play outside all day was a hardship? Come on! We aren’t allowed to just go outside. If my parents don’t know where I am for 2 seconds they freak out! Imagine having to be tethered to your parents by the cell phone 24/7!!

So here’s from us, we’re sorry your childhood was so pleasant and simple. We’re sorry you’ve been taking advantage of all the newest technology that we’ve been building and testing and using. We’re sorry that your childhood amounted to drinking out of the hose and writing letters to friends and listening to the radio. As for us? We’re on the internet. We’re pooling our intelligence and our resources and everything to create the future. We’re working to stop evil people like Joseph Koney halfway around the world. Or had you heard of that yet? We’re going to try to get you people out of debt. And all of it while dealing with an ever mounting socio-economic pressure. Maybe if you got your head out of your behind and took some time to know us, you’d see past everything we have that you are really just taking advantage of now.

Regards,

The Kids of Today