How Teens Have Influence

     In many ways, today's youth live in an adults' world. Adults write newspapers and books. They control TV and radio stations. But newspapers, books, TV, and radio combined are not as powerful as the internet. When you want to learn the definition of a word, do you look it up in a dictionary or google it? Which do you use more often, wikipedia or an actual encyclopedia? Do you even own an encyclopedia? If you do, when was the last time you dusted it? If you want to find out what's going on with somebody who lives far, far away, do you send them a letter or facebook them?
     Facebook, facebook, facebook. It really does rule the world today, and the teenagers rule it. Yes, I know that adults use it too, but they're just getting introduced to it. The adults are still adjusting. Today's youth are being raised on it. And we know how to put it to good use.
     If you've read my earlier posts about James Tate, you know that facebook helped reverse the princi-pal's decision. Wait, let me rephrase. Facebook reversed the principal's decision. Set up a few pages, get a few thousand people to like them, and voila, "international notoriety", as the principal herself called it.
     Another important way teenagers influence the world is language. Namely, slang. I cannot think of any slang word or term that was invented by an adult. And why is that? Because young people are new. They come onto the sceen with new problems, new interests, new thoughts, and new words to explain them. And sometimes, these words become popular with people of all ages.
     (A little tip for the adults of the world: Do not attempt to use any slang you have not heard a young person say. You may be more wise and mature than they are, but this is their sphere of control.)
     So even though teenagers are faced with prejudice and aren't taken seriously by adult media, we control, we control other forms of communication that are gaining more and more power by the day.

Teens and Technology

     Hey, everybody! Did you know that sometimes, kids know more about technology than adults????!!!!!!
     Sorry for that. I have to recognize that some of my readers might be living under rocks. Or have recently emerged from a twenty-year coma. Anyways, welcome to storytime:
     Once upon a time, that time being 1968, there lived a twelve-year-old boy. Let's call him Bill, since that's his name. One day, Bill's class went on a field trip to see a confusing new invention: the computer. With instructions from a teacher, he sat down and typed out a few instructions. Lo and behold, the bulky machine actually did what he wanted! Bill was in love. Soon, he knew more than his teachers about computers.
       But with most love comes trouble. Bill and his friends got in plenty of trouble. They cut classes and didn't turn in homework because they were sitting in the school's computer lab, writing programs and playing games. Even worse, they used up all the school's computer time in a few weeks. Then they crashed the computer company's network. Then fixed it. Then crashed it again. The company tried to secure it. The kids hacked it.
     When the company's executives realized how smart the students were, they hired the students to fix the weaknesses in the system. Bill spent all his time with computers now, which worried his parents. They told him to stop working with computers for a while. Ah, the pangs of forbidden love! He listened for almost a year. Then he came back with dynamic force. By the time he graduated from high school at seventeen, he was a world-class computer expert. That was before he was even legally an adult.
    So why is it that teenagers so often know more about technology than teachers and parents? Maybe it's because they were born into a world of text messages and touch screens. Their parents were not. Maybe it's because they aren't as busy as their parents. Maybe it's because they take the time to figure stuff out.
     Just today, my mom was helping my younger brother write a report and told me to print off some pictures for him. She had found the pictures and downloaded them, but she wasn't sure what to do from there. Neither was I. I normally right-click and click print. But for some reason, that wasn't working today. So while she was busy helping my brother with the writing part, I figured the computer out. Either one us could have done it, but she was doing something else.
     People seriously underappreciate just how smart teenagers are. The world is a technical place now, and teenagers have the keys at their key-tapping fingertips.
     Quote of the Day: "I knew more (about computers) than he did for the first day, but only the first day."
      -Bill Gates's math teacher