Originally Posted by ThirdOfFive
(Post 2099581)
We geezers certainly do have all the answers--even if most of those answers contradict the answers of others. But not only do we solve nothing, for the most part we cannot even really define the problem. Mostly we just fall back on our prejudices.
Sometimes it pays to get closer to the source. I had a conversation with my granddaughter some time ago, really about social skills but applicable here too. Her statement? "The reason that so many people of my generation are such total losers socially is because they never really learned HOW. Their "socialization" is social media".
That deserves some careful pondering, from a couple of aspects. Social media in some part (large part?) has become a surrogate parent to kids since--oh--the mid 1990s or so. A kid behind a screen can be anything he or she wants to be, and convince others that he is who he portrays himself as being. He's rarely if ever in personal contact with many of those online "friends" so he doesn't worry too much about being outed as a phony. His world probably--and social life certainly--are words on a screen. Personally he may be someone who other kids pick on, or who lags behind in school, or whatever. But he doesn't have the social skills to deal with those issues in person, so he just hides from them while building up his social media persona.
Couple that with the fact that no matter how far out or bizarre someone's ideas are, he or she can find uncountable sources on the internet that agree with his ideas. He doesn't discuss them in person with the people he encounters in daily life but he DOES discuss them with like-minded people on social media. He's not looking for information so much as validation (a common problem, even among us geezers), and he finds it. Doesn't matter how far out. The world is flat--people of one religion drink the blood of the children of another--One race will eliminate another race unless people who believe like HE believes intervene, etc. etc. His socialization is mainly with people with beliefs equally or even more bizarre than his. The REAL world--the world of face-to-face interactions with peers, practicing the skills needed to get along in daily life, knowing what to say and what not to say, becomes less and less important. It is a bad confluence of negativity. It is a bomb, in some cases, primed to go off.
Okay. Factor #2. A kid growing up in America today is taught to FEAR guns. Guns are EEEEEEVIL. Guns are SCARY. Only BAD people have guns. He hears it (if he hears anything) incessantly about it in school. So--here we have an insecure, alienated kid, saturated with bizarre ideas, who buys, borrows or steals a gun. His online persona portrays him as a swaggering bad guy. He takes the gun and becomes that guy. Maybe he only wants to scare people (how many kids bring guns to school just to show other kids?). Maybe his bizarre ideas and viewpoints dictate that violence is the answer to whatever his twisted mind tells him the problem happens to be.
And the bomb goes off.
It is no coincidence that the rise in these school shootings parallels the rise in social media usage, and even more precisely, the lack of effective parenting in lieu of the kid living on social media. They're not taught much else--at least not much else that sticks. An alienated kid or young adult filled with bizarre ideas is a catastrophe waiting to happen. And in all too many cases, it does.
Okay. Even if the admittedly-dramatized scenario above is largely true (and I believe, generally, that it is) just knowing it does not solve the problem. It all goes back to the parents BEING parents, teaching their kids proper socialization and just plain HUMAN interaction, and monitoring the poison that they all too often find on the internet. Banning or limiting guns is not the answer (though I believe that there are a lot of things we can do to minimize the possibility of school shootings). It will probably take as long to fix this problem as it did to create it in the first place. But until we fix the FAMILIES, this problem will remain.
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