Dear Ms Samantha Taylor,

 

I find the idea you have presented in this article; that most teenagers are not mindless zombies glued to a computer screen, true and open minded. However I find the opinions of the people you have included in your article untrue and misleading. Mr Franzen believes that online socialising is “creating a uniquely shallow and trivial culture”. I disagree here because some social networking sites do not allow pictures, preventing predjudism. Mr Franzen also talks about how our less meaningful relationships become more important than our significant relationships; this again is untrue as you can still connect with those more important relationships through social networking and keep them vital. You also include a statement that talks about how the world is drifting towards disaster because we spend “countless hours glued to Facebook”. Where as actually social networking keeps us updated with what’s going on in the world through countless people updating their status or tweeting on what’s occurring in the news. The rest of your sources are biased statements and one sided arguments from ignorant people. However you acknowledge the truth of teens and social networking, but I want everyone to realize the truth behind all the lies. I find it reassuring that there are people like you who understand what teens are actually like.

 

Mr Franzen believes that online socialising is causing a “uniquely shallow and trivial culture”. This is contradicting as he is making an assumption based on a generalisation, this is a shallow statement. Being a teenager myself, I know that this is not true in most cases. Most of my friends (who are around the same age as me) use the internet a lot, despite this they still show a great deal of empathy and consideration for others and their feelings.

 

Mr Franzen also says that our less meaningful relationships become more important than our purposeful relationships. This is again false, we can still speak to the important people in our lives through social networking, as well as the minor, less meaningful ones. In actual fact social networking improves relationships as it allows the users to speak to numerous people at once, including unimportant relationships, and the ones that matter.

 

You also include statements by two people, Louis CK and Susan Greenfield. The first being that Mr CK would not allow his children to have phones as he fears they would lose empathy; this is just one example, and I strongly believe that allowing the use of phones would not cause a loss of empathy. Empathy is gained and lost by personal experiences, personalities and can even be affected by the influences in that person’s life. You also include the statement from Ms Greenfield and she believes that parents are raising kids that have been disconnected from the real world. Actually, social networking keeps us connected with news and so on and it is really up to how the parents want their child to be raised. So really the amount of time teens spend on social networking is up to the parents. If parents dislike the amount of time their child spends on the computer or social networking sites, then they should do something about it.

 

John Henley then goes on to say that many teenagers do not know the dangers of online networking, I disagree with this statement. Indeed the survey conducted is reliable and the results support his statement. However I believe that most teenagers, when contacted by a stranger, would react responsibly and with great maturity. This is because of the constant pressure on teens to do the right thing when it comes to strangers on the internet.

 

Finally, you include a study by the Pew that says only 9% of teens are very concerned about companies accessing their personal information. I believe this is the case due to the intelligence of the teens allowing this access. Most teens are smart enough to not reveal any information that is useful like their address or anything like that, thus they do not care whether or not their information is viewed.

 

To conclude, I find it reassuring that there is someone like you, Ms Taylor, that truly understands teenagers and coming from a teen, I believe that you are correct in your ideas about us. It is unfortunate that there people like the ones included in your article, that do not truly understand teens and slander teenagers in front of the public. None the less I wish to give you my gratitude for defending  teenagers from a stereotypical view from others and revealing the truth to the eye of the public.

 

Yours Sincerely,


Nathan Smith