Dear Ms Samantha Taylor,

I recently read your article about teenagers of this current age and their inability to create meaningful relationships with adults due to the digital advances these days. I would firstly like to congratulate you on a very in depth article. In your article you stated that because of the advances of online socialising, teenagers are less able to communicate face to face. Another thing is you stated in your article is that according to John Henley, teenagers are growing up with social media sites such as Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook. He also said that these sites are making them grow up with texting and sexting. The claims made by the novelist Jonathan Franzen asked a teenage girl how many times do you tweet a day, and I quote ‘About 250 times a day or something’ are ridiculous. I totally agree with you Samantha and I believe these allegations are completely false as the people who have made these accusations are completely misrepresenting teenagers and saying that every teenager who acts in this way and manner, or puts themselves in danger when visiting these social media sites, is completely false.

 

Before I address what I need to in the title Clive Thompson branded teenagers ‘uniquely shallow’. I feel as though this is a very derogatory term to be using towards teenagers because, especially with teenagers because it enhances the sense of injustice being placed onto teenagers already in this day and age.

 

You said that that teenagers are unable to create meaningful relationships due to digital advances but these advances are caused by the adults of this generation and their advances in the 20th Century an example being the first mobile phone and computers. During the course of your article it seemed as though people were pointing the finger at teenagers for not being able to create relationships and I agree to a certain extent. If you take a look around these days especially in the UK it seems as though everything is being controlled digitally London is an internet hub, so for kids who have grown up in London all they would have known is technology and nowadays with Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook the world is evolving the way teenagers communicate is through social media that is how they create their relationships the most common way is through texting. Logically people portray teenagers as not being able to tell the difference between meaningful relationships and and casual relationships but I believe that teenagers are victims of our developing world and that it is in their nature and this habit has been cultivated because of their surroundings.

 

This leads me onto my next point of privacy on social media websites. Websites such as instagram and Facebook use privacy settings but I agree that teenagers are too relaxed with putting personal details onto websites. I feel as though teenagers are being deceived by these websites because the websites say your details will never be known they automatically believe them but as we know it is not all true. Recently hackers hacked  celebrities and leaked photos, this shows that even though they thought their photos were safe it was possible for people to access them, this shows that for all the information and photos teenagers post it is possible all their personal information can be leaked. I feel that instead of criticising teenagers we should put much more stricter measures in place to stop these kind of acts happening.

Everyone that has subjected teenagers in derogatory way needs to realize that teenagers are victims of a world that is constantly evolving. Everything that these writers have said about teenagers I strongly disagree with we need to stop putting so much pressure on teenagers and focus on changing what is happening around teenagers, as these are the thing that effect them.

Thank you for taking time out to read this letter and hopefully we can make the world a easier place for teenagers to live. It is important for us to address these misconceptions.

 

Yours Sincerely,

 

Isaac Bernard