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A Lesson in Teen Communication: Part 1

A Lesson in Teen Communication: Part 1 Gone are the days of stretching the cord into the next room to spend hours on the phone ‘in private’. Nowadays, teens do the majority of their social networking silently on their personal devices, connecting with several people at once throughout the entire day. Sounds exhausting. However it seems like it’s of the utmost importance to quickly respond to every ding - so for the first leg of my quest to understand teens, I decided to focus on their means of communication. More specifically, texting and Snapchat, as I already have an understanding of TikTok and Instagram. I sat down with my daughter to ask her about how she and her friends communicate. Texting 101: Right off the top, I was told that I’m doing it all wrong. My daughter classifies me as a “dry” texter because I use punctuation in the proper places and complete sentences. Breaking news - periods are aggressive and harsh, however exclamation marks when used in excess ar...

A Lesson in Teen Communication: Part 2

For this leg of my expedition into the puzzling world of teen culture, I decided to dig into what really matters to them — something meatier than Snapchat and fashion (which, by the way, is suspiciously reminiscent of what we wore in the late 90’s early 2000’s - fair warning, any mention of this will only earn you a scathing glare). Expanding my horizons to include the elusive male perspective , I invited my 16-year-old daughter and her boyfriend to join me. Hooray! Another semi-willing participant, bribed only with the promise of Starbucks. What followed was a class in teenage communication, featuring a symphony of shrugs, grunts, and the occasional eye roll, peppered with moments of surprisingly thoughtful insight. The takeaway? Teens aren’t apathetic — they’re just more fluent in sarcasm and memes than actual small talk. So, what gets them talking? Spoiler alert: it’s not politics. Here’s how it all went down: I had my suspicions that traditional topics of debate would not gen...

Welcome!

Welcome to my Genius Hour Project! I’m confident that I am not the only one who has observed a group of teenagers, and questioned what in the world they’re doing when they’re performing dance moves over and over again in random places, covering their faces for every photo, or obsessing over whether or not they’ve been “left on-delivered” for an entire hour. And I know I can’t be the only one who turns to Google after a conversation to determine whether or not they've just received a compliment or an insult. “What if my kids could make me cool again?” In my quest to bridge the generational gap and better understand teenage culture, I’m going to learn from the source! Over the next several weeks, my teenage daughters are going to teach me what they know through a series of interviews where they will give me lessons on lingo and what’s currently trending. Let’s see if I can get up to speed!