Parenting a Teen - The thirst for validation and the false lure of the internet as provider of it

 

Invalid, apparently

Everyone needs to feel like something they do, say, or put their effort into is in some way validated by others. 

How often have you heard folk saying "Oh, yah, well I do it for me, not for anyone else" then in the same breath have heard them railing against the injustice of the clique, the horrid croneyism that the Internet breeds, the perfect environment for hopes to be raised and dashed with a few clicks of the mouse or a deft keystroke or two. 

We are in the middle of a validation crisis, with our (pre) teen wondering why on earth the Internet is such a cruel place and yet we (so far) haven't even let her anywhere near the real ugly side of the net, proliferated by social media platforms or streaming channels. Nope, this has all come about from something as simple as a coding community. 

Scratch and Hopscotch maintain two (relatively kid friendly) communities, allowing kids to develop and share their own games and coding projects. It's all innocent fun really, seems to be relatively well moderated, but of course is a blunt introduction to how algorithms and popularity ratings achieve a clunky balance, leading community members like our daughter to believe that real, genuine, actual humans are playing their games or looking at their projects, and giving them the thumbs up or thumbs down. 

It's a bit like the weekly art challenges on Twitter. You can contribute your very finest work, your most strenuous effort, your most polished piece of art to some of the hashtagged art prompts that crop up, and get fewer likes than the person who blatantly just stuck the topic into Photoshop and shoved a filter over the top of it before passing it off as their own work, their likes stacking up like the delicious layers of a beautiful cake while yours melt into nothingness. Ah, sweet justice, hast thou forsaken me?

Really I just wanted an excuse to post stills from
Gattaca 

Then there's the teen paranoia, the worry that because a particular project hasn't gained the sort of recognition or traction they expected, that this is somehow a community reflection on them as a person, that somewhere out there a set of Scratch or Hopscotch acolytes are giving them the "Brutus" thumbs down, dooming them to forever languish in obscurity while someone else's project, copying a popular template almost line for line, gets listed in that week's "notabke" projects. 

My friends, I don't really know how to get it across to a (pre) teen that this is how the internet worked and has worked since Sir Tim first lashed one IP address to another, stuck a few markup pages to it, and declared it the first website. 

With the rise and rise of the internet comes the natural rise and rise, and in some ways the evolution of our perception of our own self-worth beyond our mere outward physical appearance or personality, to now encompass our Online persona and its worth in terms of hearts, retweets, likes, quotes and clicks. Mr Charlie Brooker did a fantastic job of summarising this nefarious evolutionary twist in a Dark Mirror episode, where your very worth in every single aspect of your life - not just online - was determined by your overall popularity score across your social media presences and your online forums and platforms. 

As an old guy, I fear I lack the vocabulary and language to adequately describe this to my daughter as we're at the stage where every rational breakdown and analysis of such behaviour is deemed unpalatable and anger-making. Honestly, you think you lose your temper quickly if you burn yourself while cooking or stub your toe on the stupid feet that stick out from that dressing table you wished you'd never bought? Hell truly hath no fury like a Teen not getting the answer they hoped for when they ask for your opinion!

Folk often wonder (to themselves, and of course online in their various messages and tweets) why the world is filled with such hatred and anger and why everyone seems to be getting more and more pissed off with their lives. The answer, my friends, begins the very first day you set up your first profile online and start swimming against the tide upstream in the constant search for validation.