Alpha Mind Blog

Trafcom News: How teens communicate in 2007. A fine post by Donna. Laughed out loud.

The whole post is funny, but am I alone in thinking it takes a very serious, perhaps grave tone at the end?

And let’s all think about these teens coming to work in our organizations in a few years.

Part of the post’s thrust is that teenagers are failing to learn, or are unlearning, key communications competencies:

Teens have lost the skill needed to ring a bell or knock on a door. No more: “Hello, Mrs. Cleaver, can the Beave come out to play?” Instead, today’s teens stand on the front porch, or in their cars if they are 16+, and call the person inside the house, using the mobile phone conveniently glued to the palm of the hand.

If Donna reads her own post the way I read it, then, there is a real foreboding in that ending. If kids don’t know how to knock at a door, how many other skills will they be missing when they enter the workforce?

Of course, Donna may not see things as grimly as I. Perhaps I’m seeing (more than others do? more than is real?) that our new technologies for instant communication lead to superficial communication. If I can use my cell phone to avoid meeting the Beave’s mom at the door, then, while I still know the Beave, I’m missing an important piece of deep information about him, to wit: what’s his mother like and how does she behave at the boundary of her domain? I hope I don’t need to explain how this is information about Beaver. Without it, my understanding of him is just slightly diminished, my relationship with him slightly less rich than it might have been.

(photo by permission Jana Werner)

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 15th, 2007 at 2:22 pm and is filed under Communications, Education, Group Dynamics, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the Comments Feed . Both comments and pings are currently closed.