Imagine Woodstock in the age of Instagram.
Or Fonzie on Facebook, or Tiny Tim on Twitter.
We baby boomers predated the digital revolution. Consequently, our teen and young-adult years were relatively carefree - with emphasis on free. By free, I mean our indiscretions and exuberance were not digitized, analyzed and archived.
By comparison, young people today are under a microscope. Maybe that helps them drive between the lines, but it may also explain why risk-taking is an underdeveloped skill.
Mark KennedyMeanwhile, we baby boomers and Xers are more than happy to employ technology to keep our kids on short leashes. It's at best ironic and at worst hypocritical.
Oh, well.
How are today's teens constrained, you ask? Oh, let me count the ways.
» Find My Phone. GPS tracking is a 21st-century miracle, but I'm trying to imagine being a teenager with a car and a smartphone and having your parents know your every stop, your every right turn, your every soda run.
Do we use it as parents? Yes, we do.
Am I glad this technology wasn't around in 1970s? Yes, I am.
» Powerschool, ect. Thanks to the advent of online academic portals such as Powerschool, parents can keep up with a teen's classwork - or lack thereof - online. While 16-year-olds should have no expectation of academic privacy, they probably don't need dad reminding them of a missed chemistry homework from a week ago.
Nevertheless, I persist.
» Insurance nannies. There is no hard sell yet, but car insurance companies are tooling up to install monitoring devices on our vehicles that can track the number of miles we drive, how hard we brake, our average turning speed and time spent driving over 80 mph.
They are being marketed as discount tools now, but it wouldn't surprise me if someday they become mandatory for teen drivers.
» Miscellaneous misdemeanors. If you really want to freak your teen out, show him or her the digital mugshots of people arrested by local police. Then explain to your child that one bad night and they too can be enshrined there. Forget three strikes and you're out - one strike and you might be explaining a night of indiscretion when you were 18 to a prospective employer when you are 25.
Raise your hand, baby boomers and Xers, if you think you would have enjoyed this level of scrutiny.
View other columns by Mark Kennedy
» Pre-employment drug testing. High-tech mass spectrometry has enabled cheap drug testing of prospective and current employees. Think how much different the '60s, '70s and '80s would have been culturally if drug testing had been as ubiquitous as it is today.
Sorry, kids, the permissiveness of '60s probably will never be repeated.
» Caught on camera. It seems like you can't look up these days without seeing a security camera pointed in your direction. This is generally a good thing, since cameras can potentially expose criminal activity.
Still, it feels like no matter what you do, Big Brother is watching.
Taken together, all these technologies improve public and personal safety while exposing bad behavior. That's good, I suppose. Unless you're a kid; and then it sometimes must feel like the whole world is watching.
Contact Mark Kennedy at mkennedy@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6645.