brushfire"This, yes, this, it was always like this." -Stanley Koehler
REFLECTIONS OF AN EMPTY NESTER
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There's a certain irony when your 19-year-old son chastises you on your use of social media.
We teach our kids whatever they post is there for everyone to see. We want them to be aware of the ramifications as they apply for college and interview for that first coveted job. Now we're reading about the “social media footprint” of prospective appointees for positions in the government casting doubt on their fitness for office. Elected officials have lost jobs and damaged reputations due to an insensitive tweet or retweet. As parents, I believe there are times we can learn from our children. For example, I see adults texting in cars far more often than young people. My 20-something daughter once shouted “It can wait!” to a middle-aged woman driving with one hand on the wheel and her eye on her phone. And having a designated driver is assumed among the 21-year-old and over set. Isn't that what an Uber is for? Adults my generation are still navigating all this. “Honestly, Mom, do you actually read things people post on Facebook?” my son asked. “And when you post stuff, do you really think it's going to change anybody's mind?” Yes, I said, I do — at least to the first question. If it's someone whose opinion I respect, I will check it out. I do try to understand other people's perspectives. Or at least I think I do. As for changing someone's mind, no, sadly it won't. And it may — and has — resulted in hurt feelings and even lost friendships. As far as media in general is concerned, my son admitted he no longer knows what to believe, especially on Twitter. “It's like on the Internet, everybody has to be first,” he said. “That's how false information is spread.” I told him his grandparents got their news from the calm and soothing voice of Walter Cronkite — “the most trusted man in America,” according to an opinion poll — on the CBS Evening News. My son may not have heard of Walter Cronkite, but he got the point. Imagine a world, I might have told him, where there were three television networks and no cable TV. Imagine a world where journalists had time to check their sources and verify information while meeting a predictable deadline — where news was, literally, hot off the press. Imagine a world where being first wasn’t more important than being factual and reality didn’t blend into entertainment. Today we have access to instant information. There are many advantages to this, but there also are pitfalls. We hear about how we are each in our own “echo chambers” with information readily available to reinforce our existing opinions or biases. We also are easily duped, as is becoming increasingly evident with reports of a proliferation of false news stories serving as click bait for profit. When I was a child, there was a rumor Paul McCartney was dead and in fact had been for several years. That the world believed this for a while was shocking. Now this type of misinformation is commonplace — and Paul McCartney, as far as I know, is alive and well. “Your world frightens and confuses me,” Cirroc, the unfrozen caveman lawyer played by Phil Hartman, used to say on “Saturday Night Live.” This is the world we are navigating today. To borrow Cronkite's well-known parting catchphrase, “And that's the way it is.” This appeared in the Grosse Pointe News Nov. 24, 2016.
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Mary Anne BrushJournalist, fiction writer, wife and mother |