Mom and Tween Views on Tween Communication Now and 30 Years Ago

Posted by Michele McGraw on Apr 29, 2011 in Tech | 0 comments

Today is “Bring Your Kid to Work Day” and my daughter decided she wanted to go to work with me. I figured this is a great opportunity to show her what I do all day because I’m sure she thinks I have loads of free time while she is at school. My post this week will be written by my 12-year old daughter, Sami and me. We have decided to write about tween communication. Sami will write about how tween communicate now and how she thinks tweens communicated 30 years ago. I will write about how I think tweens communicate today and how I communicated when I was 12.

A Mom’s Point of View

When I was 12, my friends and I spent a lot of time talking on the phone. Planning to get together involved calling one friend to decide what we were going to do. Then each of us would have to call a few other friends and then there was a lot of back and forth calling because we had to figure out who was going to drive us and who would pick us up. Each parent had different questions and the Moms always wanted to talk to the Mom of the person driving to be sure we were covered. I think it often took several hours to get one night’s plans in order. Or of course there was the simple, “walk down to your friends house, knock on the door and see if they are home”route too.

Let’s not forget, if you called and got a busy signal, then you had to keep calling over and over and over. We also never knew who was calling in advance, we had to take a risk and answer to find out who called. I lived in a house with 3 girls, so our phone was always ringing and we were always fighting over the phone. My parents got a second line because my mom ran a business out of our home and there was no way she could conduct business on our home phone. I remember spending hours in the middle of the night talking to my friends because no one was yelling at me to get off the phone.

Nowadays, it seems that tweens have it much easier when it comes to communicating. To get together, they just send a text to all of their friends at once and wait for the replies. Sometimes a phone call or two between moms is necessary to be sure we know who is driving who and where. It appears to me that the main mode of communication is texting which can be good and bad. I’ve seen with my daughter that words get twisted and sometimes misread because you lose the tone when texting. On the same note, it is easier to quickly text, “are you mad at me?” and get a response.

When I was a tween if you had problems with others, you had to talk to them on the phone or to their face. That is a bit harder to do than to send a text. I do think that removing the face to face communication has made bullying a lot easier to do.

A Tweens Point of View

My friends and I communicate mostly through the phone. We call or text each other to find out what we are doing. Or we would just talk to each other and have a nice calm conversasion. Calling is really easy yiou just type in the number then talk. And texting is like the same thing but you type your whole coversasion.

I think when my parents were kids and they wanted to talk to their friends,  they either had to go walking to their house to see if they were home or they would have one phone and call.  If the line was busy they would have to keep calling untill it wasn’t.

It must have been a lot harder to communicate with people in or outside of your town. I like now a lot better. Now if you look around most people would be on their cell phones but if you looked around back then you would see people writing letters and walking to peoples houses. The past is so much different from now in 2011.

Tween Communication

I wasn’t really sure how my daughter would view tween communication 30 years ago. I think she has a pretty good idea of what it was like, although she did look shocked when I told her that we didn’t have  Caller ID so we had no idea who was calling before we answered the phone.

Ultimately, our modes may have been different, but tweens now and 30 years ago still spend a lot of time trying to figure out the whole communication thing. Tween years are so tough because they are learning how to get along with other people. I try to give my kids the tools to communicate and teach them how to deal with people in difficult situations. I have taught them to confront others by talking to them rather than talking about them and making assumptions.

How do you think tween communications is different or the same in the last 30 years?

Images from Microsoft Image Gallery

Michele McGraw (ScrappinMichele) is a mom of 4 who blogs about technology, digital scrapbooking and fitness at Scraps of My Geek Life. She can be found socializing on Twitter, @ScrappinMichele andFacebook.