Waiting in a Small Terminal

On the small commuter airplane it was easy to see the screen on her Mac. There was a very short wait before the cabin door would be closed and all electronic equipment would be turned off, but there was enough time for her to access her Facebook account. I had noticed her in the waiting area, the airport was small and there were only a few people awaiting the early morning flight. She was fourteen, more or less, and her face exuded that look of mixed dependence and insouciance that identifies early teenagers. A look that builds a gulf, a moat of protection. She was not quite attractive, her chin was a little too small and that gave her a look of mousiness, too sharp to be lovely almond shape, and she had a light, spotty coating of acne. Her hair was pulled back tightly from her face and that and her smallish eyes added to an appearance that was interesting more than appealing. Over her shoulder, the view of her Facebook pages let me see into her character or nature deeply and quickly; much more than she would have wanted. She easily moved her fingers over the keyboard, and wheeled through a number of photos. Some were of her friends, individual pictures, a team that might have been soccer of softball, and occasionally a graphic that included words that could have been pieces of a deep friendship, or a budding romance. The objects were too fleeting and secretive to get a clear understanding, and there were the always prying parent’s eyes to avoid. Then she settled on a series of recent photos of herself. Now it became more difficult to see into her mind. One of the photos had been edited with an artsy, softly out of focus look, and converted to black and white. (What I think she would have denied and resented is that this made her look much more like her mother than the harder unedited photo.) Is this the person she would like to be? Is this the person she wants the outside world to see? Or, is this the person she hopes to grow into? How did she feel about the other pictures? Was she pleased? Doubtful for a girl of her age, since most are highly self critical and want to be something quite different from who they are. Perhaps she was pleased with what she saw, and the spinning of the wheel that moved the pictures was self acceptance, appreciation and approval.
Then she went back to her Facebook photos of friends, the friends whose acceptance and disapproval would be so instrumental in shaping her adult personality and values. A hundred years ago, or ten thousand years earlier she would have developed these adult traits through a small group of friends or chums, a gang, girls and boys of her own age, the only ones who could be trusted, the only ones that knew what you were going through and what it meant to be in that in-between-age, adults certainly didn’t know. So, the “social networking” phenomenon started to make more sense to me. There are no legitimate rites of passage, rituals that mark the transition into adulthood are greatly delayed and trivialized, other than the magnificent experience of getting a drivers license. Even the Bar Bat Mitzvah is greatly outmoded since becoming an adult at 13 in a highly complex society is an absurdity. And that’s the role of Facebook, and the other networking systems, at least from my view, and that’s why kids are so much more attracted to these networks than adults, and why adults can’t find the fascination that is so engrossing for kids, it is filling a void that has been created by our society and our culture. I heard recently that the drive to own a car has been reduced primarily by social networks – hard to imagine!
It was a telephone when I was a teenager – so limiting – no pictures, only available when the other person was at the other end, no music unless the headpiece was held up to the radio speaker, highly susceptible to eavesdropping, and always the source of kidding and subtle and not so subtle pressure to keep the phone open by parents and siblings. Ah, but then there was a car, and that changed everything!
If my theory is correct, what is the motivation for so many adults to use Facebook, twitter and the other social media? I suppose the primary reason is a return to youth, it is the electronic form of hair dye. But perhaps, I’m simply excusing my lack of fascination with facebooking. I did reconnect with a cousin after more than 45 years, so there is some level of interest.