The Disinterested Life

There was an article in the paper Sunday that I thought that Sam would like. A while back, I started thinking that Sam was interested in creating video games.

Sam was interested in what the article talked about, so I asked him if he wanted me to help him see if he could find out more about the event, as in general information gathering on the Internet. I then asked him if there were anything other things, concepts, topics, communities, whatnot he might be interested in learning more about.

Short version: I don't know what Sam (or Jake, really) is interested in. Based on his own words, I don't know if HE knows what he's interested in enough to pursue outside of school.

There is a belief that teens and tweens today are so completely mediated by the network that the parents are completely unaware and incapable of keeping up with the network mediated social dynamic and the software environments that enable it. Their interests are too varied, directed into tiny niches that require specialist knowledge beyond what parents ever have learned and changing too quickly for parents to keep up.

My kids just don't do that.

I know very few people my age with kids who haven't had to deal with kid access to online resources. The primary target right now (that I'm aware of) is Facebook. I wonder how many kids are lining up, waiting for the 13th birthday so they can create legitimate accounts on Facebook. And the number that don't wait, with our without their parents is probably a much larger number.

Sam's been 13 for a couple of months now, and he says he has not interest in Facebook, or really any other social network or online community, o social curve. Maybe he just doesn't have enough experience to know what's out there.

That is no true.

I'm probably the most technical person most of the people I know ever have to deal with. The home network is a couple of layers deep with safeguards, most of which I either built or modified myself (not perfect, but better than most out-of-the-box). I've prompted the boys numerous times about what they would like to do online and offline. Natalie and I talk freely about what we do online. I even review maps of my social network activity with the boys (and anyone else who cares to listen)

Most of the time, I have to remind the boys to check their e-mail. If I didn't tell the boys they had e-mail, I don't know if they would ever check on their own.

When Sam and I did talk about what interested him, it WAS about making video games. (At least this makes me feel like I've been paying attention and have a bit of a clue, even if just a tiny one).

While I was trying to figure out the best way to help Sam collect information about his interest, I was thinking about what my own interests where.

I tried to remember what my interests were when I was 10-to-13-years old to see if I could get some guidance from how my parents dealt with me at the same age the boys are now.

Honestly, I remember a lot of my 10-13-year-old self's life being dominated by my siblings playing softball and baseball. I was probably a lot like my kids are, only without the Internet and as many video games.

I do remember spending a lot of time at the library researching a wide variety of topics. Not that any of these topics were things that I would consider important today. We're talking about a world not just before search engines, but before a publicly accessible global network.

Trying to think about what my interests were when I was the same ages my boys are today, it makes me really start to wonder how my parents managed having two kids with "normal" interests and me.

Today my interests are a little more focused:

• Gadgets, tech and whatever I'm playing with
• Coffee
• Computer generated art
• General Productivity Porn (thanks to Merlin Mann for that word)
• Whatever Natalie and the boys are into (a dad has to do what a dad has to do)
• Enterprise Content Management (cause one has to pay the bills somehow)
• The Culture of the Internet (don't ask me why, but I like studying this)

I remember reading a couple of years back that if you look at your e-mail, blogging or whatever other writing, you should be able to see the things that you tell people are interesting. This was before RSS, other forms of syndication, Facebook, Twitter and other social networks and texting took over the world, but the idea still holds.

E-mail is now dying. What used to end up in e-mail it seems most people now expect to send via Facebook (shame that I killed my account earlier this month). I haven't gotten a personal e-mail in months.

This site doesn't have any purpose but to talk about what I'm interested in, and what I'm doing. But I don't want this to become a single topic site. I'm only one person, so my interests tend to run in cycles, with clumps of this or that topic for days or weeks. But most of the time I end up posting not anything at all.

This site used to better reflect who I was, in closer to real time. Maybe it's time I did something about that.

Try to stay interested.