“Out of the overflow of the heart, the fingers tweet” (
I remember in the Democratic primary when Bill Clinton was asked if he’d ever tried marijuana. His response is the now very memorable, “I didn’t inhale.” However, if you watch the actual interview, he admitted he’d experimented with it before stumbling into his infamous quote with which the media had a field day. With that comment handing in the political air, most thought his bid for the presidency was finished. After all, no one could be elected president after admitting that, right? Yet Bill Clinton was from a different generation, one in which many had experimented with drugs. The admission turned out not to be an issue. Following suit, George W. Bush and Barack Obama admitted to experimenting with controlled substances. We’ve learned a couple of things from Clinton’s media hiccup. First, drug use doesn’t hold the stigma it once did. Second, we’ve learned that identity formation and reputation have shifted.
This class of graduating seniors represents something new…they’re digitals, the first generation to have grown up with the Internet. They entered adolescence with smartphones. Cell phones belong to the previous generation; smartphones are the standard tools of the graduating class of 2014, and those tools are contributing to how teenagers’ identities are being formed. Similar to the shift in perception with Clinton’s famous quote, the ability to text, tweet, interact on social media is continuing to shape students’ identities and reputations.
The experience of watching my own teens and their friends utilize social media has been mixed with awe and wonder, as well as shock and horror.
A few weeks ago, the Yik Yak app spread through our school like the Ebola virus. Yik Yak is a platform that lets users anonymously communicate with anyone in a surrounding radius. Nobody had heard of it one day, but then the next day it hit campus hard—and the day after that. After becoming a big problem, school officials took action. If you want to see what high school is like, download Yik Yak now. My wife and I did, and we were devastated by what we saw. Teens were sharing secrets about other teens and saying true and (we hope) false things about others, making bomb threats, etc. One teen wrote, “Aren’t you glad you aren’t popular today?” Discussions about nude selfies of girls began to surface, and then some moved to Gaggle (similar app), where pictures could be shared anonymously, mostly a bunch of boys trading nudes of girls from school. My wife and I felt horrible for the girls whose pictures were circulating, until we realized the girls appeared not embarrassed but proud they were in demand. In fact, the girls generated more images for the boys to spread.
I worry about these teenagers, their reputations, how they feel inside when they are violated, and what the consequences might be of developing coping mechanisms to hide the real hurt of public exposure.
Social media isn’t just creating teenagers’ identities; it is forming their reputations. We are quickly realizing the unintended consequences. When Andy Warhol said we’d all have 15 minutes of fame, I don’t think he was close to imagining that YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and every other form of social media allows everyone to find instant local—or global—fame. Celebrities face unique turmoil for their fame, but teens face similar turmoil on a smaller scale. Unlike celebrities, teens can’t go into hiding, flee the country or utilize huge financial resources to deal with the exposure. They have to live in their communities—communities that create identities for them based on actions that never would have become public before. I worry about these new tools and their impact on the well-being of teenagers, but I also realize the hope we have in Jesus.
If there is anything I know about the gospel, it’s that many of the people Jesus’ love impacted had bad reputations. Among them were prostitutes, swindlers, adulterers and murderers. If Jesus could change the identity and reputation of Paul, how much more so does Jesus offer to redeem and restore the reputations and identities of future generations?
When this generation has grown, runs for office and someone pulls up a nude selfie from the past or a humiliating tweet, I hope their generation remembers…”This is what we did back then, and this is how we connected.” I hope they haven’t damaged their reputations beyond repair. I hope they remember everybody has a little something on the Internet they wish weren’t there. Everybody has a past. I’m glad none of this is new to Jesus.
