Except that it’s increasingly impossible to avoid social networks. Especially if your peers are using them. It’s easy for older people to talk about how optional it is because it is optional for their cohort. If you’re my age and younger, it’s like deliberately closing off an avenue of social engagement and advancement. Not that it matters if you understand that. In ten years, more people will. 
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A lot of pre-social media stuff is still on the internet, but there was no corporate model based on attaching everything created (plus browsing history) in perpetuity to your name, even if you never signed up with it- think of Facebook’s shadow profiles today for people who never signed up, but whose friends did, or used the facebook app and had their phone contacts copied to facebook etc. An internet where things were lost, forgotten in the churn. That doesn’t make the people who used it better or wiser, just lucky.
The kids today aren’t doing anything that previous generations didn’t do (including all the stupid photos). The only difference is that there are companies that are preying on them, companies that by design have sought to erase every boundary people erect between different facets of their life and trick them into revealing more (see the EFF’s thing on evil interfaces). And, generally speaking, I’d say the ‘kids these days’ are far more savvy about what they share than those over the age of 35.
But sure, go ahead and act like it’s just “kids these days.” It’s not like it’s a novel concept to scapegoat them for problems created by older generations…
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Deep escape
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Point made for me. Peer pressure has always existed, but bowing to it has always been at the hand of the participant. No matter the motivation, the action is still voluntary.
I use social media extensively (my side business owes everything to it) so I don’t cast it as evil… but that said, it is still a voluntary process on the part of the user. I know plenty of people who eschew social networks on principle, their lives haven’t fallen apart because of it and they never bitch about their privacy being violated on them.
Jean-Paul Sartre is sitting at a French cafe, revising his draft of Being and Nothingness. He says to the waitress, “I’d like a cup of coffee, please, with no cream.” The waitress replies, "I’m sorry, Monsieur, but we’re out of cream. How about with no milk?”
It’s an oldie, but a goodie. I draw distinction between meaningful choice, and pseudo-choice. Telling people that being gay might not be a choice, but that homosexual acts are choices, would insult their intelligence. This is very similar.
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I learned to program from TRS-80 magazines and a C64 attached to a b&w TV with a cassette drive. We had PETs at school, and then C64s.
I do not recall ever playing Oregon Trail.
WTF IS WRONG WITH ME?!?!?
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yeah, that one i know i have never played. we had zork and other infocom games set up in our school lab.
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But Zork isn’t educational! And without a guidebook, I can’t imagine any school-age kid making much headway, for that matter.
On that note, Richard Cobbet’s memories of “Granny’s Garden” on the BBC Micro come to mind.
http://www.pcgamer.com/crap-shoot-grannys-garden/
This was high school. Grade school we only had the appleII in the advanced math classroom and only one of them so not much goof off time on it.
We had a classroom with a DEC PDP/8e and five Teletype machines.
We hunted wumpuses and fell into pits instead of dying of dysentery.
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On that note, this particular Buzzfeed article is both similarly topical and eerily accurate.
I have a weird conspiracy theory floating around in my head for the past couple of years that there has been an active campaign to act as if Gen X never existed.
In reality, I think the reason why we’ve gotten so much less press lately is that we are sandwiched between two huge generations who had massive things going on - the Boomers saw the civil rights movement and then Vietnam, as well as the rise of rock music. The Millennials witnessed 9/11 and the war on terror, coupled with the rise of the internet. We had Watergate, the rise of Reagan, and the end of the Cold war, and culturally, we saw the “subculturing” of popular music (punk, hip-hop, metal) and the expansion of genre-fiction based popular culture. But much of all this is only now having an impact, as we are just now getting into positions of power to shape popular culture - but it’s being aimed at Millennials, because of the connections between youth and buying power. Our consumer, youth oriented culture continues to play to the boomers, because they are so damn many of them, and same with the Millennials.
I think numbers wise, the Boomers and Millennials are far larger than Gen X. As much as I’d like to think it’s a conspiracy, we’re just lost in this weird shuffle.
No, we just keep our heads down and get the job done. We’re the generation of latchkey kids, expected to get home from school by ourselves, get a snack, do some homework, and be around when mom and dad get home from work to have dinner.
A lot of us had to grow up a lot faster and as a result we don’t get the stories because we just don’t give a damn. We didn’t go up in Troy’s bucket, it’s our time down here. All we want to do is find that pirate ship and keep the house.
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Commodore PETs that no fucker on the staff knew how to use. Also, ZX81 Crew represent. OFF MY LAWN, FUCKERS!
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I was born at the end of 81, so depending on who you ask, I belong to either. I used to choose Millennial because I liked them more and the sorting hat said I could 
. But this Oregon Trail idea is really more accurate.
One thing neither article mentions is the benefit of growing up along side the technology. I had to write papers by hand until word processors came out. Then came hard drives where you could save :: 
::. Appreciation of technology is part of it, but so is a better understanding of it. We learned on the old stuff, which is what the new stuff is based off of. And we learned it at an age you enough to adapt to the changes.
This is all accidental mind you. I’m not saying we’re better 'cause “we get it man”. We just got dumb lucky.
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oh great, now I’M going to be thinking this now, too. it is an interesting point…
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Yeah, the rational me doesn’t think it’s true, but the non-rational self-deprecating lack-o-self-esteem monster inside of me KNOWS it’s true…
Or maybe they have given up on us as being to media savvy to fall for the marketing. It’s weird at work with all the boomers still around getting ready to retire and the younguns getting hired cause they are cheaper than the us Xers cause we actually have mortgages, family, and actual job experience so we want more than a starting salary.
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