It is a scary thing to have your 46-year old mother ask if you have seen Bat Dad’s most recent antics on Vine. There are just two appropriate reactions to this: One, send your mother to bed because she has fallen horribly ill. Two, find shelter because the zombie apocalypse has arrived.
Finding parents who know just as much as their teenage counterparts is not uncommon anymore. The age of the technological savvy parent is here – and it sucks.
It begins with email, and soon after, your techno parent’s plague covers the Internet and onto social networking. In 2011, Mark Zuckerberg was an icon and Facebook was an adolescent realm. As of January 2014, 31.1 percent, the majority of Facebook users, are in the 25-54 age bracket, while the number of teens and young adults with accounts fell 32.8 percent from what it was in 2011. Teens responded and took refuge at parent-dead domains, including Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr and Vine.
After requests on Farmville, your tech-addicted parent resorts to everything you, the teenager, has and enjoys. This will ruin your life. From apps like Flappy Bird and Temple Run then to Instagram and Pinterest, not only do they enjoy it, but parents are good at the apps as well. As frightening as it was to have your 46 year-old mother ask about Vine, it is just as frightening to have her inform you that her current level on Candy Crush is 363.
A tech-dead parent is almost as bad: your 47-year old father doesn’t understand the Microsoft Word software or how to work the new computer. Because your mother now has a Facebook, he would like one as well. And because he does not understand how the website works, he is not the one posting pictures on his account: it is you he calls to do so. Even though you create everything, your 47-year old dad ends up being the one to delete it all.
Not only does he not understand the way it works, your 47-year old dad does not comprehend Internet etiquette. After sort of getting the hang of social-networking, he is free to embarass you in a whole other medium. He does not understand that commenting a winky face on his teenage neice selfie is considered inappropriate, nor does he realize how life-ruining it is to post a status about how his son has tickets to see “That Beaver Kid” in concert. The line between virtually shareable and not shareable no longer exists.
Despite his tech-faults, your tech-addicted mother is still far worse. There is no pause in her technical adventure of terror. Sometimes she forgets to pick your little brother up from his bus stop because she is so engrossed in season two of “Downton Abbey” on Netflix. Or worse, she’ll send you to get him for her. Your day is even further ruined when Dowager Countess Crowley becomes more important than dinner.
Some of us need to have a heart-to-heart with our tech-struggling parents. Showing your 47 year-old father how to work email without your help can save hours on hours of time. And teaching your 46-year old mother Internet etiquette and begging her to not tag you in posts on Twitter or any website might make our lives a bit easier.
And ‘accidentally’ deleting your 46-year-old mother’s Vine account is not a bad idea either.