Teens in Translation

She was about 15 years old, standing in the soup & salad line. Her mother was deep in conversation with her, perhaps about the sports game they just came from seeing that the girl was in an athletic uniform. The daughter was talking jovially.  Then I noticed something that truly surprised me.  The girl was also texting on her cell phone, barely glancing at it.  It was a subtle movement. This went on for a good ten minutes and I was captivated by it.

Two conversations at one time.Is it possible? Surely this is an emerging skill of these "€œmillennials"€. These kids'€™ neurons must be forming in ways that the human brain never has done before, a new kind of fluency and dexterity that intelligence and verbal skills tests don'€™t yet capture.

 I may be a bit behind the times since my girls have yet to reach the modern right of passage of owning a cell phone. So I consulted with a friend. She laughed when I told her the story and followed up with a "€œWait '€˜til you hear this."€ Her son'€™s middle school recently banned cell phone use during the day because the kids would text with cell phones tucked deep in jeans pockets -- so automatic is this thumbing of minuscule keyboards -- that it became an impediment to school work. €œ"But there'€'s more!"€ my friend exclaimed.

Apparently, one story that hit the newspapers in her area centered around unintentional and underage pornography. A girl bared her breasts to her cell phone camera with a suggestive comment and sent it to a boy, who then sent it on to his buddies. (Of course, what pubescent boy could resist?) The recipient boy, however, was found out -- in a likely uproar of shame and drama by the girl'€™s parents.  He was then arrested for delivering porn to underage teens -- his friends.

Upon hearing about this my friend disabled her son’s cell phone feature for sending photos. (I didn't know you could do that.)

"Well, boys will be boys,"€ she commented.