They all
crave praise in a world where self-esteem is constantly under attack. As
friends Mary and Reshma, 16, told me: ‘It’s all about hotness. You want
total strangers telling you that you are buff, that they want to have
sex with you. It feels good and makes you feel better about yourself.’
These
teenagers are well used to giving and taking abuse and are also
increasingly numb to being shocked by the sex and violence they see
online and in films.
Nothing
revealed just how inured they have become as much as the day I showed a
large, mixed group the film The Silence Of The Lambs. I remember
finding it genuinely disturbing when I was a teenager but they seemed
entirely bored and indifferent to it, describing Hannibal Lecter
variously as ‘too gay to be a serial killer’, and, ‘a pussy who listens
to classical music and chats boring s***’. Horrific serial killer
Buffalo Bill sent them into paroxysms of mirth and they all agreed they
were glad that the horror films they watch now are ‘good’.
In
their world, ‘good’ is extreme violence as entertainment; ‘good’ is
depicting torture, sadism, suffering, and human depravity. ‘Good’ is
blurring the line between entertainment and reality, where they can
watch someone have their head sawn off on YouTube, and then flip on to a
video of pop star Rihanna writhing in a sequinned bikini.
I
joined a group of boys watching one of these brutal videos, originally
posted by fanatics carrying out executions in the Middle East, which are
wildly popular on the internet. Teens search for these videos mostly on
YouTube, a site they spend a mindboggling amount of time on (one told
me he was looking at it on his phone during his grandmother’s funeral).
Chloe Combi has now written book Generation Z about her two years of
research. She has used the children's own words to describe their
experiences and feelings about what happens online
Of the
hundreds of thousands of similar ones, the clip I watched had 800,000
views and counting. It was an odd experience, punctuated by cheers and
groans of revulsion from the boys with me.
Clearly
they were not differentiating much between the real suffering in these
clips and the brutally realistic and stylised depictions of violence
they see in modern video games and films. As Tom, 15, pointed out: ‘You
do forget that that is a guy who might have, like, kids or parents, or
something. I guess people try not to think about that aspect.’
In
a way, the most worrying fact in all this is that neither the internet
nor social media is going away. As the 21st century develops, all of us,
but particularly the young, are going to become more entrenched in our
carefully constructed online worlds and identities.
It
is increasingly important that parents and guardians insist on their
teenagers living, communicating, forming opinions and experiencing
things in the real world. It is crucial for all young people to know
that nearly everything online is constructed or fake.
Sex
in the real world is different. Violence in the real world is
different. People in the real world are different. And as alluring, fun
and glamorous as the internet can be, reality, with all its
imperfections, is so much better.
