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Only the guilty should feel guilty,but recently our societal norms seem to reinforce this collective guilt idea. At the risk of sounding like a hippy, we need all the positivity,mentoring, and free exchange of ideas we can get - not less.
Surely we should be judging people based on what they do - a meritocracy. The internet is fantastic in levelling the playing fields (location, gender, race, etc.) - (further hippy alert) ideally those ideas would become more expressed in the real world too.
I agree with Peter - how we deal with this online will either further encourage the media sensationalisation, or perhaps curb it. Actually discussing it is a great first step though, as I think a lot of people keep these thoughts in their heads, and end up just erring on the side of caution by default.
I am a teacher so I never, ever, ever friend anyone online who's below 18 -- just because of appearances. Some people have accusations about even less than friending and teachers have lost their jobs. It's a shame because I'm a tech teacher and would really like to share geekiness with those who want to or be more available to kids who need tech help after-hours, but it's just too gray an area. I no longer even respond to any text messages from kids. Some teachers I know do have students as friends, but I say it's risky.
The main point you made which resonated with me was the difference in ages in online friends. The bigger the difference, the more unhealthy a friendship could appear, no matter how innocent. Too bad we live in an age of so much connectedness but so much need for caution as well.
Thanks for the post!
Alana is incredibly mature (period, not "for her age"... she's just very mature). She's more mature than a lot of the other 28 year olds I know and a lot of the 40 somethings I know, too. I asked her to do a SXSW panel with me because I value her input and thinking.
More so than her age, half a brain cell worries about the perception of me interacting with her b/c she's... um... fair to the eye. Then I realize she probably gets the same about me. ;)
Knowledge is being democratized more and more everyday... and with regards to technology, "experienced" people aren't necessarily the most knowledgeable. I think as long as you conduct yourself professionally, there's nothing for you to worry about.
I agree with the idea that you might not want to friend anyone you don't really know, because then you don't have a good sense for why they want to friend you either.
Why would or should they? Do we really want to perpetuate this weird, and extremely modern, quirk in society where we should be suspicious of people's associations with the young? We've done reasonably okay for thousands of years with adults and children interacting in a mostly healthy way.. yet only in the last 50 years have the scare stories of pedophilia (which is no more common now than ever), child snatchers (ditto) and child abuse caused otherwise intelligent adults to fear talking to children. Let's not perpetuate this, otherwise our young will have no guidance other than from their parents.. and we're already seeing what a gigantic failure that is.
I think its just how you handle the friendship or your interaction with that person that could make the big difference.
If one generation cannot teach the next, if mentors and wisdom are cast aside, we're in trouble indeed.
It takes a village.
I didn't realize old(er?) people felt like this.
"Dude, you aren't in India! Stop thinking like this!"
Second, people "should be concerned" if you're real world friends with a 20 year-old? Dude, what kind of Neo-Victorian crap have you been fed? I wouldn't normally be so blunt, but it's obviously causing you some discomfort... you're a caring, thoughtful guy who has been sucked into one of our culture's many sinkholes of self-doubt.
I wouldn't care if you were *dating* a twentysomething, let alone befriending one. I was once twenty, and more than half my friends were in their late 30s... hell, one of them was seventy! Now I'm 38, and those friends are in their fifties... big whoop! (The seventy year-old sadly passed ten years ago.)
Cut yourself a break, Louis.
The whole world is going in this direction. Of course, when the kids become adults, they will be totally helpless against anything, and suddenly from the protected group will be moved to the "guilty until proven innocent" group. That will come as a shock.
Without adult society as a whole disciplining and guiding children, we are left only with discipline coming from parents, and this seems to be weaker than ever, with most parents pandering to their children rather than directing them.
To children, adults are becoming anonymous automatons who refuse to interact with them, so they become like tin cans on a wall.. mere targets that can provide amusement but won't fight back.
But overall I have found younger people to be creative and enthusiastic and to share more of my interests than people my own age. And online I tend not to think about age and rather focus more on interests and what it is we share in common and can learn from each other.
On the other side of the coin, though, how do you react to older people friending you on social networks? For example, my husband's grandfather actually actively uses two (!) Facebook accounts. The man is in his late 80s.
And yes, I know it goes both ways. Steven Hodson is a bit older than I am, for example, and I consider him a peer for sure. I know the Web is the great equalizer, and that we should turn a blind eye to differences, but some of the barriers we've built in the real world are in place here as well.
I still exercise a lot of caution when friending people on social networks. My Facebook friends are either those I've known personally through various walks of life and those I've known through this industry (though the gap is slowly narrowing and I'm starting to meet those people IRL as well). I am a lot more liberal when choosing friends on a site like LinkedIn.
There's really no rhyme or reason to why I chose to participate in social sites this way. Facebook, though, to me, is a site that I was an early adopter of, and I only accepted friendships from real friends. LinkedIn, on the other hand, was quite different. That said, perhaps there's an unconscious desire to keep Facebook personal and LinkedIn professional.
As for the age thing, I know the younger generation is more comfortable about sharing their information online. This is our future. I guess we must get ready to embrace it.
why not?
And most of these barriers were built in the last ten years I think. As I said on friendfeed, I kept in touch with the co-workers of my parents, and there was no "raised eyebrows". How else could someone learn from a real life role model? Or should the kids just keep to pop-idols and hollywood unreal heroes?
It's a shame, because children are losing the opportunity to have mentors - chiefly because those who might lead, teach and set an example worry about public perception.
I don't think the creepy factor it is so much about a difference in age, but rather the thought of "who are you, how did you find me, why did you look for me, why do you want to connect with me?!".
it is resonance of consciousness that determines this, that is independent of age
I'm 32 now and I have close real-life friends in the plus/minus 12 year range. And online? Hell, I don't even know the age of half of those acquaintances!
I see how dating might be a problem if you're violating the universally accepted half-your-age-plus-seven rule...
But thanks, now I feel really really old after your post ;-)
Ignore the age, ignore the photo, ignore the bio and look at the content being provided. That content is the only thing that holds waters... and the only reason you should or should not friend a person.
Maybe here's a good comparison:
People always talk about how age differences mean less as you age. In middle school, it was a travesty to be hanging out with 7th graders if you were an 8th grader, for instance. In high school, it's acceptable to date those that are maybe 1 or 2 years away from you, and in college, you're golden unless you're palling around with high schoolers-- creepy.
Perhaps, in the online world, this age range is maximized. If someone's mature enough to speak with you online, they're mature enough to hang out with.
(Note that many of the physical characteristics of age are often eliminated online: tone of voice, body size and shape, perhaps other habits, too.)
I recently had a longer talk with somebody (way younger) who noted that he does not feel taken seriously from 'the older' people. Which I think answers very much your question of "What do give that person": you acknowledge them as being adults or being grown up enough to be with adults.
At the same time I think one sometimes should take into account that some years of life experience will be missing, one way or the other, but other than that, this is what you provide them with. I think that is a lot.
The whole notion of "friend" is my issue. Up until very recently, I pretty much avoided "friending" someone on a social network if they weren't actually a friend (which basically meant I didn't take part in social networks).
And then it hit me: The word "friend" within social networks doesn't mean that at all. It's basically just a "subscribe" or "follow" and doesn't really mean anything more than, say, a 14 year old buy every album -insert pop culture idol here- makes or a 8 year old having a fascination with, say, the star of Spider-man.
Sure, there isn't as much possible interaction, but fan clubs have always existed, too. Is it all that different from a "fan club" where you're interacting with your "fans"?
What's creepier isn't so much the 15 year old girl following one of us 30-somethings on twitter or contacting us on Flickr. What's creepy is the images and content these same folks post that then appears in our feeds if we return the favor. Unfortunately, the trend seems to be that if you don't follow-back, friend-back, contact-back, etc. that you're being rude. That seems to be a very real generational divide -- and probably doesn't have much of a solution currently (if one is even needed -- it's up to us to not also follow the other person if the service allows one-way following or friend-ing).
For instance, I have a cousin who is about 10yrs younger than me. We do music, as do a lot of his friends, so I am also cool with his friends...who are all his age or younger. My dad also is into music and has a lot of connections in the industry, so I am friends with some of his friends...and some of his friends are friends with my cousins friends.
Was that confusing enough? Huge age differences, but the common interest overrides them.
I think the 10-15 years younger that you metric is wrong - it should be based on someone's absolute age not your age relative to them.
At age 18 at least if not 16, people are expected to interact with people of all ages above at least. If someone is 18 almost certainly have to deal with people upto age 65 in the workplace or university etc. and in the UK many kids of 16/17 will have jobs that involve this type of interaction and for others being online maybe a big part of their job (it was when I was 17).
Below 12/13 would seem be a lower bound - not sure if they really should be interacting online with non-family adults.
And that leaves some gray area from 13-18 which I couldn't think of an answer to.
How would your experience been better, had Alana been 25, or 35 or 45?
My Dad was an actor and so I grew up around theatre folk and being that most productions have people of all ages and it was common to go out after each show there were friendships that developed between people of every age. Nothing weird about it.
It’s all about life experience really. I’m a 28 year old guy who is single and while I’d like to think we’d get along fine if I ever met you I suspect you’d have a lot more in common with a 20 year old if that 20 year old was married and just had twins.
The truth is, imho, you can learn something from anyone and life is too short to pass up the chance to gain that knowledge because you’re afraid of what other people might think.
When I return to the US I hope to make friends with children (under 12) and with "old people" (over 50). I'm 22. Is this "creepy?" Should we be content to be socially confined to a +/- 5 year bubble?
Children are interesting - they grow very quickly, are excitable and creative. Old people have wisdom and perspective (and often a lot of time). Cutting them out of my life would highly reduce its dimensionality, right?
I'm 11 years younger (chronologically) than my spouse. We've been together for 25 yeas. Mentally? We're peers.
One of our friends is the 20-something daughter of a friend of my spouse. The daughter has been a friend in her own right since she was 5 years old.
I joined Mensa between College and Grad school because I hoped it would help me meet new people. I made friends who were 16/17 and friends in their 70s and above... and none of us seemed to notice or care.
I'm chronologically older than most of my co-workers. As leigh points out, these days at most companies, "everyone is twenty". The older you get, the more people you will meet who will be younger than you are. Get over it.
The problem here isn't the number. It's how you feel about the number. Or how you don't feel about it.
I've always felt that the people I work with are my peers. Sometimes, someone mentions that he has grandchildren. Or a co-worker says "I was too young to see Star Wars when it first came out."
And then I forget again, because we're peers.
Ginger - I feel so sorry for you. You'll never know what you have in common with someone if you make a generalization based on their age. Everyone's experiences are different. (I met a woman 20 years younger than me who watched exactly the same television shows growing up. She grew up in Europe.)
To those who think it matters - with true maturity, you realize that "age" is just a number. What counts is what's in the other person's head. Think carefully about wat's in your head and ask yourself why your age matters?
I dig it and could not have said it any better myself.
I think we're finally starting to shed many of our shared social hang-ups that, when considered beyond just the surface, are usually just non-sense.
Why can't some one be a positive role model for a 10 y.o. (Michael Jackson jokes aside)?
Frida