Michael HornThought leader creating a world where all individuals can build passions & fulfill their human potential. Author of the national bestseller Job Moves: 9 Steps for Making Progress in Your Career

Coming of Age Online

Name: Coming of Age Online
Uploaded: 2024-03-07T14:11:34+00:00
Duration: 45 s
Channel: Michael Horn
Description: In this excerpt, the speaker reflects on how contemporary youth engage with online communities, noting that older generations often dismiss these spaces…

7 Mar 2024 · 1 min

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In this excerpt, the speaker reflects on how contemporary youth engage with online communities, noting that older generations often dismiss these spaces because they differ from their own experiences of in‑person interaction. While acknowledging that digital spaces can offer valuable social opportunities for adolescents, the speaker emphasizes a key concern: the quantifiable nature of social media—followers, likes, and other metrics—intensifies social comparison. Since adolescents are actively forming their identities through peer comparison, the speaker warns that social media can amplify this process to a potentially harmful degree.

Chapters

So I think we sometimes dismiss these forms of community because it's where the kids are, and it wasn't like our experience. Like, I did hang out with my friends in person a lot more than many kids in this generation are doing. And we kind of feel bad for our kids because they don't have that. But online can be really positive for them. I think the downsides are some of the ones that have been brought up in the hearings, but I especially worry about comparison kids comparing themselves with others. And you can really quantify your response on social media. Any of us can see how many followers we have, how many likes a post gets, and it's so easy to compare that with others. And adolescents are wired to be figuring out who they are through some of those comparisons. But there's a degree to which social media, I think, turns up that dial and can be maybe too intense.