Connection in the Age of Communication

Even though it wasn’t too long ago that I was a teen, times since then have changed drastically.

When I was 15, the world was a different place. The height of teenage fashion was the preppy look popularized by the wholesome cast of Friends, The Backstreet Boys and Brittney Spears (this was before dancing with a python, the Madonna kiss and shaving her head). Glee wouldn’t hit television screens for another eight years, so my years spent as a choir nerd were anything but cool.

Cellphones were a rare item. Hardly anyone I knew my age had a cellphone and the ones that did carried phones roughly the size of a brick. There was no such thing as texting back then, let alone sexting. Lots of people had home computers, but the laptop craze hadn’t yet kicked in, and no one had even conceptualized an iPad. iPods were around but were still considered a luxury item, not a necessity. And the concept of touch screen was as futuristic as the sleek, floating world of The Jetsons.

Back in my day (man, I feel old writing that, but it’s true!), if you wanted to communicate with someone, you had to wait to see them at school or actually call their home telephone (unheard of these days).

Today’s 15-year-old has a cellphone, can text about 30 words per minute, practically invented sexting, has a personal laptop, iPod, flat-screen television and game console. With the convenience of cellphones, teens can text during class instead of passing notes.

Texting is instant communication, a way to talk without having to wait for someone to pick up. Gone are the days of having to call your friends at home and speak to their parents (the horror!). Social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace allow teens to keep in constant contact. They can message, chat or drop a line on a friend’s wall. Teens can now connect with each other anytime, any place, so long as they have a mobile or WI-FI network.

But the thing that gets lost among all the electronics is simple: good old-fashioned human connection. Teens today are so used to interacting via gadgets and social networking sites threat they’ve lost the need for face-to-face interaction.

During a recent family reunion, I sat at the kid’s table during a pizza dinner and was amazed when, instead of simply talking, my teen and pre-teen cousins opted to get to know each other via Facebook and texting. I asked my cousins why they didn’t just talk to each other. Texting and Facebook is easier, they explained.Looking at each other’s profiles gave them a sense of what they had in common, they said, and they were too shy to talk, so, naturally, texting was the best way to communicate.

I found it fascinating that while sitting in the same room, people would opt to communicate through technology instead of just making small talk. Then it hit me: With the convenience of technology, kids these days haven’t needed to hone their in-person conversation skills. But what happens when they need to have those skills, say during a job or college interview?

Though the merits of technology and instant communication are great, teens need to learn how to communicate verbally, face-to-face, with a diverse group of people in order to achieve success in the professional and academic fields. Or to just simply learn how to work a room at a party. Whatever their ambition, teens need to learn the value of networking without an electronic.

A great way to network while sharpening verbal communication skills is volunteering. Nonprofits provide vital services to our friends and neighbors and help us connect with a larger network of people. When I was a teen, I volunteered at a nonprofit, teen-run newspaper and advocacy group. In my time volunteering, I learned how to communicate with my peers, with adults and with the media.

I had always been very shy, and through volunteering, I gradually learned how to interact with a wide variety of people. Many professional and academic doors began to open for me, once I learned to speak with confidence and establish connections. I learned how to conduct myself during an interview, how to convey an argument, how to introduce myself correctly and, conversely, how to introduce and interview others.

The nonprofit I volunteered at, unfortunately, no longer exists, but luckily, several other fantastic nonprofits in the community still do. For example, this summer, the Watsonville Volunteer Center is hosting the Junior Volunteer Program, which will run from June 20th to August 1st. The aim of the program is to give teens an opportunity to develop professional skills through an internship with a local nonprofit. Through the Junior Volunteer Program, teens will learn how to communicate without a cellphone and how to build their real-life network without a computer screen.

And hopefully, they’ll have fun getting to know people the old-fashioned way: introductions, questions and small talk. But if that proves too nerve-wracking, they can still add a friend or "like" a page on Facebook.

— Vanessa Quiroz-Carter