When I was growing up, my Dad did the crossword daily, and he still does.  I didn’t know anything that could help on most days of the week, unless it was a comic book related clue.  Jump to today, and I can help with about half of the puzzle, even on the hard days.  I just hadn’t read enough, lived enough, caught up on enough history to be useful to him when he was working the crossword puzzle.

Our generation was the first generation to spend our formative years on the internet.  We are a different kind of social creature than our parents.  The next generation will differ from us in ways we can’t imagine right now.  Do kids today even go to chatrooms anymore?  They sure as heck text and sext each other a lot, but where we were the internet generation, they will be the smart-phone generation.  The interaction is there, it’s just that it’s dialed down, one on one character assassination conversation.  They’ll do the 140 character dance, but so far, only in ways that immediately benefit them.  Flirting with a girl, making a date, or informing parents they knocked up someone so they don’t have to face the ‘rents’ wrath right away (if this hasn’t happened yet, just wait).  Do you remember forums?  I dare you to find me active and interesting forums aside from Fark.com, Metafilter, or Wikipedia.  I was at MentallyIncontinent.com back in its heyday, and it was awesome.  These days forums are solely the realm of gear-heads, and other hobbyists.

Teens don’t Twitter because Twitter is a messy MOB compared to the simplicity of texting on your cell.  On Twitter, anybody can talk @ anyone, and you kind of have to track down the parts of a full conversation sometimes.  If it’s not instant gratification or a nudie FWD, I think teens really could care less at the moment.

Do you remember how self-centered, self-important, and self-involved you were in your teenage years?  I vaguely do.  If you constantly market to a demographic, and tell them they are the most beautiful, most loved, most important group to come along, they are eventually going to believe it (at least a little).  Hey kids:  They’re only saying it to get your money!

Twitter is mainly social commentary (at its best) and self-promotional whoring (at its worst).  From news (tragedy, politics), to media (TV, Movies), and mundane life happenings (“I’m a twitter-shitter!”), most teens just aren’t wired right to have the ability and burning desire to make witty comments and share them with the world.  In a lot of cases, their ego-in-training could never handle the potential abuse.

Twitter can be a popularity contest in the extreme, well, how many friends do you have?  How many of them are real people you converse with?  You’ve met?  Sure you pimp content you’ve created, share that hilarious video you just discovered, and totally Favorite and RT things you find humorous or especially brilliant.  But at it’s core, twitter is a numbers game, and score is kept with friends lists:  mine’s bigger than yours!  Do today’s teens really need another popularity contest?  While in the shark-infested waters of HIGH SCHOOL?  (apologies to whomever I’m cribbing, I know I read something along these lines in a blog, if it was you, let me know, I’ll check it out and link you here)

Okay, one last anecdote, to wrap this up.  A good example of age breeding wisdom and all that.

When I was in school I took the Family Relations/Parenting class, y’know, that one where you carry the fake baby and your classmates try to kick it so you get a failing grade?  Anyway, we were to bring in a love song to share with the class.  Any love song.  So, since I had the chance to inflict my burgeoning punk-rock musical tastes on the rest of the class, I chose… “Mabel” by Goldfinger.

Our assignment was to decide whether or not each song represented “true love” or “lust.”  Soo difficult, I know.  Everyone in the class agreed for my contribution, “lust.”  I went along with that determination, because I was young, and timid, and didn’t know the half of what I know now.  If I were able to teleport back to that day, and lock my past self in a storage closet, taking my younger self’s place, I would argue for “love.”  I would argue that love is not always reciprocated, and that love being unrequited makes it no less true.  The actions of the woman he loved in the song, dumping him for another man, deprecating his man-tackle, yet he still thinks she’s “The Bomb,” this only shows the love to be true.  He can’t help himself.  If you say you’ve never fallen in love with the wrong person, I’ll tell you that you haven’t lived life yet.  Love can end in tragedy sometimes, but there is no true love without risking part of yourself.

Today, we can twitter that sort of thing if we want to share it.  I look forward to all those teens joining us and sharing their insights, whenever they grow up.  When they finally “get” Twitter.