Comparison of Internet and Social Media Use by Generation - A Personal Perspective

Online Behavior: A Generational Divide

After Reading When I Moved Online By Tao Lin, Consider How Your Use Of The Internet And Social Media Is Different From That Of Your Parents. Write One Well Developed Paragraph With Specific Examples And Explanations.

What Are Three New Skills That You Will Adopt After Reading Part 

After reading “When I moved online” by Tao Lin, I gained a better perspective at understanding my own and my parents’ online behavior (Lin 2013). Since I have attained a considerable age, I have been using computer and internet for various purposes. Since the beginning I have seen extensive use of internet in my house. My father and mother used them for their jobs and personal use. During my childhood, internet was used to teach me various topics, these helped me in developing my learning better. I took help from the computers, just like my parents did in preparing their reports and analysis needed for their work. We would also use internet for entertainment and relaxations by watching movies and listening to songs. It was also an important part of communication. Despite that practice, their view and mine became different as I grew up.

During my adolescent, I became aware of the social media sites. When I joined Facebook and Instagram, I realized that my parents too were already on it. When they found out I was on the social media sites, they took time to talk to me about the things that I should be aware of doing in the social media, how I could ensure my own and the system’s security. This made me realize that they were quite informed about the technology that they were using. As I was growing up, better smartphones and internet connections were introduced. Now, it was possible to connect to the world anytime we wanted.

From the very beginning, I and my parents have learnt about the internet and social media together. Despite that, our views and understanding of these two had been different. My parents saw the internet as a necessary evil. A trend that was slowly taking over the world and one could not reject the use of them. For them, social media was a platform that enabled them to connect with their friends and acquaintances easily. It enabled them a platform to search for new opportunity and understand what the young generation were thinking. For me, the internet was a necessity, something I couldn’t do without. I did my homework, learned new things about my study lessons through the internet, it helped me in my project works, it helped me connect with my friends who went away to different places for different reasons.

Attitude and Approach

There was also some differences how we approached it. My parents were mostly cautious using the internet shopping sites and social media links. At first I was not that cautious. I learned through my experience that there are certain negative capabilities of the internet as well. My parents had earlier warned me against it. I did not give much importance to it. When I faces internet credit card fraud while shopping from an online shop, I became more cautious. Another difference that I noticed about the usage of internet and social media between me and my parents is about our views about sharing our lives online. I follow the same tradition that my generation does and I religiously follow the internet influencers and recent trends of sharing the day to day life while my parents only share few photos of special occasion.

There are also certain minute differences that we use the email. For me email can be used for both formal and informal uses. I find it perfectly fine to use them when inviting guests as this gives me an opportunity to invite them cordially with graphical invitations while saving me the time to visit each and every one of the invitees. My parents disagree in this matter and prefers to do that in person. While I understand the sentiment of inviting in person, my busy schedule now and busier schedule that I will have in future will be quite a barrier in that matter. The people that I am acquainted with also appreciates this practice as they rarely have the time to attend guests whenever they pleased. There could be many other psychological differences regarding the use of internet and social media between me and my parents which could only be understood with future experiences.

The three skills that I want to acquire after reading “The Writer’s Handbook” is my critical reasoning, persuasion and argument skills. Through critical reasoning, I will be able to make informed decision and create better understanding based on fact and logic (Cottrell 2017). Developing persuasion skills will allow me perform better at situations that I will face later on in my career like, client negotiation and making deals.  My argument skills will allow me to develop critical understanding of issues. Making good arguments require deeper insights and that is what I want to acquire.

References

Lin, T., 2013. Opinion | When I Moved Online .... [online] Nytimes.com. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/22/opinion/sunday/when-i-moved-online.html [Accessed 4 Jan. 2020].

Cottrell, S., 2017. Critical thinking skills: Effective analysis, argument and reflection. Macmillan International Higher Education.