Beyond crushing student loan debt and a bleak job market, our generation faces another issue that threatens to characterize us: A crisis in communication. Or, the lack of professional restraint in how we express opinions when communicating digitally.
We, the Digital Generation, are blessed with avenues of communication that our parents and grandparents used to read about in science fiction novels: We’re the socially networked, digitally streamed, hyper-public generation, and everything we say or do can reach a potential audience of millions. Some members of our generation have taken advantage of our technological blessings: Think of the millions of young, tech savvy Egyptians, who used Twitter and Facebook to take down an authoritarian regime that had held their country in a stranglehold for decades. Think of the brave citizen journalists in Tunisia, Bahrain and Syria. The cyber dissidents of China. The list goes on.
These people treat the Internet as a forum for elevated dialogue, a tool, a platform, an opportunity to make change and reach out to the world. The Internet is a medium of communication, just like a newspaper, television or book. But the Internet is capable of disseminating our messages to a much broader audience, more rapidly and efficiently than any other technology.
Even though some members of our generation have made remarkable use of the Internet, a vast number of young people treat it as a toy and abuse its potential as a public forum. This is the problem our generation faces, especially here in the United States. Because while other youth have made the Internet a place of elevated dialogue, it is constantly clogged and bombarded by inane chatter, vulgarity and ignorance, in the very same forums that can be employed in benefiting humanity. Think of every vapid status update on Twitter, every caps-locked screaming match on Facebook, every vile, anonymous comment on a blog or video you’ve ever seen. It has increasingly become the norm among our generation to either behave in this way when we go online, or to tolerate this behavior in others.
Nowadays, it’s considered acceptable to share and expose every aspect of our private lives before a public audience, under the misconception that posting a revealing status on Facebook won’t come back to haunt us later. (Imagine being asked about that scathing breakup rant during your next job interview).
We are all guilty of tweeting meaningless, 140-character blurbs about our day under the misconception that people actually care about the latte we just bought at Starbucks, our opinion on morning traffic, or how bored we are. This sort of behavior online fuels the growing sense of need for constant validation from one’s peers.
When people think of our generation online, this is what comes to their minds, not heroic freedom fighters speaking truth to power.
This is not to say that social networking tools must be reserved for those global causes deemed revolutionary. Rather that everyday users of Facebook and Twitter might, on a smaller scale, consider who they aim to impact with their words, and what the long-term benefits and implications of those words might be.
The smallest things — like the Madonna halftime show — are enough to trigger a deluge of derogatory tweets, sneers and jeers from every corner. Everyone has an opinion: most negative, all trivial.
Another mania begins to take shape in the minds of our digital generation: Our every opinion is vitally important, and everyone must hear it, instantly. Very rarely will you see a person staring at their screen, finger hovering over the ENTER key, thinking: Is this an appropriate thing to say? Do I want to be associated with this comment? Is this really important?
This has become the youth culture online — only not just online. This digital environment is not separate from our real, offline, everyday lives. We are becoming increasingly tied to our digital selves; we leave a virtual footprint wherever we go. And everything we say and do online follows us forever, like bits and bytes of data hovering over our heads, accessible to anyone with Wi-Fi. Every potential employer will have trolled the Internet for signs of bad behavior before you ever walk into that big job interview. If your profile includes friends, and friends-of-friends, beware: What you say travels farther than you know. When people think of you, they don’t think of who you are in-person, but who you are online.
So please, remember the old saying: think before you speak.
It’s more important now than ever.
