Inter-generational Sniping

The BBC is my favourite news source, largely thanks to the international scope of its reporting and the truly non-partisan nature of its journalists. Today I flipped to its headlines and found an article entitled “‘Mental risk’ of Facebooks teens” about a recent talk given by one Doctor Himanshu Tyagi to a meeting of professionals at English Royal College of Psychiatrists. You know where this is going already, don’t you? Some abrasive food for thought here.

Now, this is something I’ve been hearing from my parents since scraping my knees was considered a significant personal trauma: you’re on that computer too much, that’s bad for you! The bad was never fully specified, but it was implied to be some combination of malnourishment, social petrification, and satanism. My parents are psychologists.

Nearly two decades after these lectures began, I find that such an attitude is still commonly leveled at anyone born into an internet connection and the smarts to use the technological advances of their time. I haven’t got my head in the sand here, I know as well as anyone who’s lived through high school that there are weirdos, freaks, and stalkers filling my generation to abundance with qualities that I’d like to see corrected by means of a stout shovel. More troubling is the question of whether or not the electronic tools available to these individuals has simply enhanced their sickness or actually, through some mix of anonymity and license, been the cause of their perversity.

I’d like to argue ferociously in favour of the former point of view, not in the least because of my exhaustion with overblown media hype pointing to the bad behaviour of literally a handful of individuals somehow being indicative of an epidemic of some kind or another (see also: every anti-video game tirade ever published by a pasty baby boomer). The truth is, I can’t say that with any certainty. More importantly, I’ve encountered people and friends with stories of their own that are genuinely disturbing.

But I want to underline exactly what is said in the article: social networking and its kin may put people at risk of aberrant behaviour. I’m disappointed in the BBC for presenting the issue as it was raised by Dr. Tyagi in such a sensationalist, pandering light. People are influenced by the media which they engage in , not simply those falling below the age of majority. They may be at risk of developing abnormally, something which entails an unpredictable and variable frequency of such psychoses, not a rate at which the internet infects people, an impression many folks would like to create.

This disappointment is heightened by the deadpan admission by Dr. Tyagi that “the current crop of psychiatrists were perhaps not fully prepared to help young people with internet-related problems.”

At the risk of sounding childish, ding ding ding ding.

I do appreciate that the article goes on to elaborate a competitive point of view espoused by psychologist Graham Jones, a man I hold in great esteem for making the rational conclusion that “For every new generation, the experience they have of the world is a different one.” I wish the headline had alighted on his words and not the stock young-people-are-wicked boilerplate.

This brand of inter-generational sniping always bothers me, and I aim to take up the argument.