Am I Being Valid About Social Media?
The story
I’ll start here>> My dad is very experienced with technology, so naturally, I’ve had it limited a lot more than other people. From the first second I got my first computer, my dad checked my web history daily and knew how to actually shut off the internet completely for specific devices, or the whole thing just in general. As I’ve grown up, I’ve watched the other kids around me getting phones at a young age, and becoming popular because they had social media and other things I wasn’t allowed to have. I just accepted the fact that popularity has always been reliant on material things, whether people accept it or not. Today in one of my classes, the teacher asked what age everyone got an iPad and/or a phone. We shared it with her and the class (optional but I chose to). While the rest of my class said around 3rd grade for an iPad, I said 7th. And for the phone, a lot of my class said around 5th or 6th grade, and I said 8th. I came to a realization that, for the most part, a lot of other teenagers got a chance to grow up and experience this responsibility while I was held back because my dad said that devices are dangerous for me and will rot my brain like a zombie. I never believed him or cared, I just wanted to feel normal. Another question my teacher asked was when kids in my class got social media. A lot of them said when they got an iPhone, I still don’t have it. My dad always complains about me sneaking onto social media, but, I mean, can you blame me? I’ve been disconnected from the kids in my grade from this and lost my chance of having a big social circle just because my dad (and mom) couldn’t handle the idea of me on social media. They say it’s because I used to sneak around with it, but, again I’ll say it, it’s because I had to take advantage of the time that I had. Tonight I told my dad that I still didn’t understand why I didn’t have social media, because I’ve been overly safe with it in the past and would like to have it on my phone, but the kids in my grade use it way less maturely and safely than me and still have it. I blamed it on his knowledge of tech. Even if it is safer, I need to be able to learn from my mistakes, and if having social media is one like my parents said, I’ll learn. They can’t hide me from the real world forever.
