Are you on Twitter? Do you tweet, retweet, #followfriday and
#trendtopics? If you think I've lost my Mommymind, let me reassure you. Twitter is simply the latest social media tool which
allows users to tell their "followers" what they are doing, in 140 characters or less. And from what I've seen,
Moms love it. We connect, laugh, rant, share, and relate. I get that. But there's a group out there who don't get it. A
social media savvy group: Teenagers.
Teenagers hate Twitter. Despise it. Ridicule it. Known to spout "Oh
look at me I'm old and I'm telling you what I'm doing all the time." to their Moms that are on it. That type of thing.
The reason I find this so intriguing is because the teenagers today are pioneer users of other social media trends
like Facebook and MySpace. Why haven't they embraced this technology...and more importantly...why do they think Twitter users
are lame for using it? Besides the fact that their Moms are on it, I mean.
I have teenagers. I have a theory.
I'll share it with you.
The question that Twitter asks of its users is "What are you doing?"
And my basic experience with teenagers is that the answer to this question is one of two things:
1) Nothing.
Literally nothing. Sitting on the couch or lying in bed in a zombie like state, most often induced by junk food overeating
or video game over stimuli.
2) Something. Something they shouldn't be doing. You were once a teenager, so I presume
you know what I mean.
So I think trying to get these guys interested in Twitter is useless and not necessary.
They just don't want to share with us. What we really need to do is to get our younger children interested in this technology,
so that they will unwittingly tell us what they're doing, all the time.
For instance, wouldn't you like to know
a seven year old's response to "What are you doing?" all the time, so you can act accordingly in sometimes a defensive
or offensive manner? My son would probably tell me things like:
Seeing how many corn nuts I can put in my nose.
Punching my brother because he is stupid on purpose.
Trying to see if this pen works on the leather couch.
Hiding
green beans behind the couch.
Bending Daddy's glasses into a better shape. Oops.
Playing with my penis. And typing
on your computer.
Trying to wipe my bum. And using your BlackBerry to Twitter.
On second thought, maybe it's
just as well us Moms stick to finding out what other Moms are up to and keeping some of this other information "off-line".
I'll just get his teenage brother to tell him he's being a Mommy's Boy if he uses it.
