Deep Thinking

Comfort zones. Relaxing with friends. How does it happen now? While I read about the prevalence for IM’ing among teenagers, I decided to open the conversation to the guinea pigs in my house - those 4 boys and hubby dear. Fortunately they are learning tolerance from dealing with the probing questions from their librarian mother.
#1 Son prefers text messaging on his phone and IM’ing while he’s updating in myspace.com. #2 Son prefers email. When I probed for the reasons why, the difference in their friends is the main reason for the preference in their format. #2 son prefers anonymous emails because his friends are in England, Australia, and Eastern Europe. He tells me he has buddies at school, but never hangs out with them, calls, or visits. He likes to probe ideas in depth then log on at pre-arranged times to interact. He connects with the computer to download what he wants for his PSP, borrows his #1 brother’s Xbox to play interactively, but does his thinking offline.
#1 Son is extremely vivacious and gives me lessons on how to talk to other people. His phone rings, buzzes, and twitches constantly. Friends continually drop by, meet us in public, and share the “buzz” about the latest writings from #1 son’s posts on myspace. His life is very open, lived immediately, and he good-naturedly tolerates mistakes in himself and others.
Now #3 son is even more focused on his music and developing his guitar skills. He uses myspace and IM’s only when he has special needs and questions to ask. His online usage is dedicated to searching for guitar chords, tabs, riffs and more. He hosts friends but their entire focus is the music and their guitars. Going out is to the local teen hang-out to hear their friends bands (remember he is 14) When friends call, it’s always in a pack with 3-way calling and more. His use of the camera is for creativity and designing new artwork for his musical pages.
#4 son focuses strictly on one-on-one communication. He uses messaging only when one particular friend calls him and tells him to get online. His experiences online involve looking for funny videos on Comcast’s The Fan and using the cell phone to tell his friends about what he’s found. #4 son isn’t content to tell what he’s found, but often rushes in to grab the digital camera, records the moment, then shows you whether you want to see it or not. He prefers his activities in person. Online experiences are the most fun when someone else can laugh with you and look over your shoulder.
Now for hubby dear… uses email professionally, IM’s only when he’s looking for an argument politically and prefers to post on sites like DemocraticUnderground. He wants his ideas flowing constantly with immediate news updates, searchable, interactive with polls and posts for all, and a huge variety of ideas, but mostly reflecting his viewpoint. He has a brilliant mind but will argue a point for days via postings. Determined. Doesn’t choose to learn how to text message. He uses the 5 techies around him to accomplish his tasks.

So… try to fit that into a survey and study and proclaim one size fits all for learning in this century for this family. Makes you think!