The beauty of growing up on the internet
Come November, small talk topics will take a break from the coronavirus, social justice and memes about murder hornets to everyone’s favorite complaint: conversations to avoid with families over the holidays.
While most would choose politics, my least favorite conversation topic is the generational one. Not only does it never end, it is also never productive. Kathy thinks one way, and Susan tries to contradict her, but Michael swoops in with the “it’s not about their age, it’s about how they’re raised” and “kids these days.” We’ve all heard it.
Suddenly, however, I’m not one of those kids anymore. I’m 20 years old and I have rightfully earned myself a seat at the grown-up table. Yet … I don’t really want it.
If holidays in my life were a movie scene, you would see my parents and my grandparents, my aunts and my uncles, my cousins and their kids, all sitting at the table chatting away after dinner. And then there’s my sister and me, sitting in the corner, heads tucked down into our phones, looking things up and texting each other, because these people just don’t get us.
My generation does not live in the same world as generations past. When I hide away in the corner during the holidays, I am not ignoring the present. My life occurs in two different spaces; there’s the three-dimensional element of my existence I see around my body, and then there’s the geometric plane I can hold in my hold, that actually contains a multiverse.
Many people may disagree with me on this, and while there are plenty of people from older generations that have a similar presence on the internet as people my age, I think there are still two major differentiations between us. One is that my generation has fully grown (and is still growing!) up on the internet, and the second is that the communities we have built on the internet are unique to us, our interests and our time.
According to research done by Kasasa, a financial and technology services company, my generation — Generation Z — is made up of people born between 1995 and 2019 and constitutes about one quarter of the United States population.
“The average Gen Zer received their first mobile phone at age 10.3 years,” writes the Kasasa article. “Many of them grew up playing with their parents’ mobile phones or tablets. They have grown up in a hyper-connected world and the smartphone is their preferred method of communication.”
Whenever I talk with my dad, who is a part of Generation X, about how I think that my generation has the most technologically savvy members or the people who witnessed the most technological growth, he argues with me that that badge belongs to his generation. After all, he was a kid when personal computers made their debut and subsequent development (something Kasasa points out as a major “shaping event” for their generation) and he went from teen to young adult to parent as the world transitioned from landlines to flip phones to smartphones.
However, when my dad was a kid, all of this technology was still developing. Yes, the internet existed, and yes, he has watched the world gain major mobile technological capabilities, but he existed in a world where this was not always the normal. It was the new thing, the thing you might only have if your parents could afford it or were the ones making it.
For me, I grew up playing with my parent’s old flip phones as toys. By the time I reached middle school, iPhones were commonplace, and I spent most of my formative years with the World Wide Web just a few touches (not even clicks, but touches) away.
The best example for how my life on the internet differs from my dad’s is that I have spent my life thinking of the internet with a lowercase. It’s just another object, not a proper noun.
I have been writing in AP Style since 2015, just one year before the AP changed the Stylebook to say that it should no longer be Internet, but is instead internet.
The other big difference, I believe, is the community that people of my generation have curated in specific corners of the internet. As I have mentioned before, I spent a lot of time in high school blogging about books on Tumblr, in a “community” dubbed as “booklr.”
This community gave me a lot. I had people I considered my internet friends, even though I had never seen their faces and never intended on meeting them in person. I had people I looked up to, people whose opinions I respected and people whose own personal anecdotes taught me a bit about what I wanted my life to be like.
Heck, this community even helped me figure out my (a)sexuality, which is something very valid but will probably never be taught in health class. Some of my favorite books, favorite authors, favorite content creators, I found just by thinking “Ooh, this picture is pretty!” while scrolling through Tumblr.
Additionally, Tumblr, while not perfect, gave me a lot of insight into political justice issues like Black Lives Matter, all the way back in 2014, which I would not have otherwise understood in my teenage bubble of Fort Collins, Colorado.
In an article by Kaitlyn Tiffany for The Atlantic, Tiffany states that the number of unique monthly visitors to Tumblr decreased by 21.2% from 2018 to 2019 after Tumblr banned any posts containing adult content. Despite this, the website is still chugging along with its fandoms, subcultures and memes.
In the article, Tiffany interviewed Madeleine Holden, the writer of a blog that critiqued dick pics. Holden told Tiffany, “It developed this community that was so much less seedy than you would imagine for a blog that was essentially just dick pics.”
And that’s the beauty about Tumblr. Because even something that is adult content is still deeply rooted in community and uplifting each other’s voices.
It’s also a lot better than the creepy, poorly designed chat rooms of the past.
According to the United Nations Children’s Fund Office of Research-Innocenti, the internet is an important place for children to socialize, either by chatting with friends or interacting with people who share similar interests. Rather than putting children at risk, the internet allows them to be “active socializers” and feel comfortable sharing their true selves.
The UNICEF webpage titled “Growing Up in a Connected World” states that, “Our research suggests that children who socialize more actively online are better at managing their online privacy, which helps to keep them safe.”
So, yeah. I’m going to be tucked away on my phone at family gatherings instead of debating the merits of my generation, because I know the truth. Growing up on the internet rules, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
