The Role of Memes in Teen Culture

Picture by: Stuart Bradford

In this Article  posted by The New York times, Jennifer L.W. Fink describes her experience with her son and the international craze of Memes. First, what is a Meme? A meme can be a humorous image, video, piece of text etc. that is copied and spread to and from  internet users. Internet memes use images to "celebrate, mock, or satirize current events and popular culture, and they have become a defining part of how teenagers communicate in the digital world." Fink believes "memes can provide and opening for parents to talk about serious issues like corona virus or the possibility of war."

This what we call a "generational gap" between how adults and teenagers learn and perceive the news. When Fink learned that the powerful Iranian commander (Maj, Gen Qassim Suleimani) died from an American Drone, she felt instantly sick. When her son came through the doors laughing at the World War III memes, claiming that his generation is ready for war because they've been "training" for it without even realizing, through video games like Fornite and Call of Duty. What she wanted to do was lecture her sons about the severity of war and teach them that it is no joke. Instead, she decided to dig deeper into Meme culture. She discovered that kids use memes to express and channel emotions.

Fink goes on to describe many ways on how parents can connect with their children through memes. Some of the ways were divided into ideas : Recognize Humor as a Coping strategy, Listen and Provide Context, Teach Digital Citizenship and teach kids its O.K. to show emotions. One idea in the Teach Digital Citizenship caught my eye.

It is known that teens are definitely more tech- savvy then their elders, but they need adults to help them develop a personal code of ethics to guide their actions on and offline. Fink suggests families can look at images together and discuss them. Did this one go too far? What is the historical context behind this?  By doing this, I believe children will learn more information about the real world - mature and serious topics by having an open conversation with their parents. They can learn more about current events, about the government or how some countries are having serious issues.

The word meme itself was coined by Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene which was published in 1976. He created this word as an attempt to explain the way cultural information spreads. Mike Godwin proposed the idea of an Internet Meme in 1993 in Junes' issue of Wired. With this fact, we become aware that memes have been here for a long time. They are adapting to our culture and are now being used to depict serious social messages. I think Memes can be fun and entertaining, but how easily they can spread is dangerous. Because they can be spread so quickly, I think children talking to their parents about how (fraudulent) information can be spread in many forms and can have intelligent conversations about what is going on in the world.

Memes can cause a variety of emotions that people will go through. As much as they make "jokes" out of serious things, these can truly make people get very emotional. It can be a "springboard" for kids and parents to open up about their feelings and thoughts.