The Big Disconnect by Catherine Steiner-Adair EdD & Teresa H. Barker

Author:Catherine Steiner-Adair, EdD & Teresa H. Barker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2013-07-31T16:00:00+00:00

What stunned me was when she said, “But I’m not really like that,” and I’m like, “What? Why didn’t you tell me that? Are you serious?” She said, “I didn’t know how to—I was scared, which probably makes you even more sure you want to break up with me.” She got that right! It made me really question the level of trust and intimacy. I mean, I thought I knew her, and hearing this has shaken me up. If she couldn’t trust me enough to tell me these major things about herself, what does it mean to be in a relationship? All her texts and Facebook posts and time we spent online were just her posturing, being who she thought she should be.

Spike is in his early twenties and his girlfriend is a bit younger, but the Facebook persona she had maintained so carefully throughout high school and well into college was barely even an artifact of herself. It really only represented the girl she thought she needed to be. But she couldn’t give it up. Eventually, she became disconnected from both her “online self” and her authentic self, so much so that when she finally let go of the online identity, she had no sense of who she really was at all.

The adolescent search for identity is not so much a hunt for the prize fully formed, but a journey that defines you through experience and insight gained. It is one thing to be an armchair traveler to faraway places you cannot visit; it is sadly another to bypass lived experience in favor of a screen life and identity composed of posts, pics, and a superficial social media portfolio. The image of the preening teen is nothing new, but for some teens, obsessive attention to their online image or identity far exceeds the everyday mirror checks or seasonal obsession we associate with a self-conscious age. I see this presentation anxiety in my practice, and recent reports on emerging patterns of depression and loneliness among heavy tech users suggest some teens spend upwards of half the day—eleven hours—tending their Facebook profiles.

“Teens are keenly aware of their online image, and they can spend hours looking at other people’s photos,” says Kelly Schryver, who wrote her college thesis on teenage girls on Facebook and is now an education content associate at Common Sense Media. “The natural tendency to compare ourselves to others never gets to rest. Girls especially worry about others posting ugly photos of them and often feel left out after seeing events they weren’t invited to. They share photos with an audience in mind, often expecting positive feedback from friends like ‘omg! u look gorgeous!’ A few teens have even admitted to me they’ll ask their friends to ‘break the ice’ and comment on their profile pictures, hoping that others will follow suit.”

Chloe, seventeen, describes it as a fact of life for teens, much as checking the mirror has always been routine before going out the door. Online they feel compelled to dress for the occasion, which never ends.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.