Back in my day, we had paper lunch bags, apple juices, and school field trips. Back in my day, we all played outside and enjoyed it. Back in my day, we were changing, but the world didn’t seem to; at least until the pandemic. My generation, the Gen-Z generation, is a unique one, having lived through and dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic.
We, most of us, only in 4th grade, missed field days, field trips, and school. We had to adjust to this change, just like everyone else, at such a young age, when we didn’t even quite understand the magnitude of what was going on. We had to act like everything was normal, the world was the same, and we were the same. We had social responsibilities that were new to us: wearing our masks, and keeping our distance from others. This changed our experience growing up. It was difficult to adjust after it was finally over.
Every generation has had several, or just one, important event that has shaped them and made them who they are today. For us, it was the pandemic. For the younger generations, you could say that it’s social media.
The Gen Alpha generation is the first generation ever to grow up in a world of AI and social media, where technology is an integral part of our lifestyles, compared to the previous generation. As more and more adolescents grow up with social media, tablets, and phones, this impacts the way their brain develops and how they think.
According to the NY-Presbyterian Hospital, there have been recent studies that social media has impacted brain development and is linked with increased depression rates in adolescents, although it’s not known what the long-term effects are.
What is known is that the emotional part of the brain is impacted, where we fear or react, and the part of the brain responsible for judgment, reasoning, and rewards is impacted. Other parts of the brain responsible for processing negative and positive emotions showed that there was lower sensitivity to social anticipation, which means how people prepare for social roles, mentally and behaviorally, and to social cues, according to Dr. Allison Bender, neuropsychologist, who works at the NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center.
Social media puts pressure on teenagers to act a certain way, dress a certain way, changing the perception of the coming-of-age experience, the teenage experience, and what it means to be a child in our world today. It’s why you see girls dressing like teenagers, toddlers dressing like adults, and why there’s peer pressure on elementary schoolers to have phones.
This changes the childhood experience in that they feel pressure from peers and online to act more mature and older than they are.
The phrase “Our children are our future” is a common expression. We need to protect our children and give them the opportunities we never had, so that they don’t live in the world we do now, so they can be the change that our world needs. Our hope for the future and a greater world.
The Gen-Alpha generation is probably one of the most hated, if not disliked. They’re known as annoying, bratty, and rude. In short, they aren’t exactly what we envisioned as the dream of a great generation. A generation that can change what we have done wrong and make what is better.
I think that the world is changing, so much more so than ever before, and it’s a cliché saying, but this time I don’t think it’s ever been more true. Children are growing up in a world that is shifting, growing, and changing at such a rate that nothing seems substantial. Distraction and mindless social media consumption are the standard, as it’s set by not them, but by us. AI is more advanced than ever; cheating in school is normalized, and again, it’s us.
We are the ones who should be their role models, because it’s not all up to them to be the change if they don’t know how to. They’re being forced to grow up and be mature, much like we were during the pandemic, but with social media instead.
Social media is why children seem to be “growing up too fast.” They’re still having the same childhood experience we all had, just very different from what we define it as. Beyond their appearance and behavior, they are still children, despite how they dress, act, and think.
