While relaxing the other evening and reading my E-mails I opened one from a family friend that I would normally ignore. As with most of you, I am sure you all get messages from family and friends via E-mail, Twitter, Face Book, or on your Mobile phone announcing every event in their lives beyond the street lights coming on. In this message was a link to a YouTube video. I am not sure what provoked me to click on it, or if it was just an accident, but there I was watching their daughter dancing in the kitchen to a tune that no one had ever heard of before.
As I sat watching this seven year old imitating Madonna and doing her best not to look like she was just swarmed with ants it dawned on me that a couple of things were going to happen in our near future. The first is that since we now all have video recording capabilities on just about everything except our microwaves our children are growing up with just about every moment of their lives being recorded. The upside of this is we may be producing a generation of better actors. The downside is that we may be developing a generation that do not know how to be themselves as they are always expected to out do their latest video so their parents can keep everyone interested in their non ending feeds to all their friends.
The second thing that dawned on me is that when the seven year old generation of today become teenagers and find hours and hours of embarrassing videos posted all over the Internet of them they are going to turn on their parents with a vengeance. (I know I would.) As my daughter used to ask in jest when I would pick on her "Do you want a good old folks home or a bad one?" there appears to be a generation that will be intent on taking revenge on their parents for their stupid behavior because they found cell phones and You Tube cool.
This is just a warning to all parents. Please remember when you were a teenager and how you would have felt if your parents showed all the embarassing pictures and home movies that they had of you to every friend you brought into the house, then went to your school and showed all them on the big screen in the auditorium, and then advertised in the news paper where they could get private screenings of all them, as this is what you may be doing to your kids. The Internet has a long memory.
Please remember that someday you may need your children's help and they may post movies of you in the old folks home, changing your diapers, or numerous other embarrassing moments of your life as well. I for one would be with the kids on this one. So to all my family and friends who participate in these activities if your kids ask my help in getting even for what you are doing to them now, my answer will be sure. You have been warned!
T1Truth
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