I recently entered the working world, albeit for a week and only as an unpaid intern, but it taught me that for years I have been lied to about what to expect from the “real” world. My entire life I have been warned about the food chain. “You start low, only menial work, and you’ll be lucky if the bosses even sniff in your direction! You’ve got to work to be valuable.” It’s the same in school, where we seem to gain power and respect as we go up in years, with the ultimate respect being sixth year. In school, we strive and scramble and struggle to that last year: imagining what pranks we will do, going to our graduation, what we’ll wear for our debs. In reality, each year is a stepping stone to that end goal. More experience is better.
But in my brief foray into the working world, it seems that this is not the case. Young people aren’t pushed down due to a lack of experience, but rather valued for having a different experience. On my internship, of course, I had to address envelopes and tidy store rooms and do the general busy work you’d expect from someone without qualifications. But I was also asked to research trends and “influencers” on Twitter and Instagram. I was asked, very earnestly, my opinion on their publicity strategy, what I would change, who in the market is doing it better. They understood that I wasn’t qualified to work complicated software, present in meetings or advise on business, but I was qualified enough to know the culture that surrounds us. And what qualifies me is my youth.
I spent my entire adolescence denying my adolescence. I was told that the social internet was a waste of time, chasing trends was irrelevant, and nothing was more important than academics. But as I am constantly learning, to quote Oscar Wilde, “the truth is rarely pure and never simple”. The social internet is a key part of the modern world. In many ways it is the modern world. It is the frontier that is currently being fought for. I don’t pretend to understand it, I don’t think anyone does, but it is imperative that we try.
When I expressed my shock at one stage that I was taken so seriously and that my youth was a positive not a negative, one of my bosses just laughed and said “Well, you are the future.” I realised that she was right. The future isn’t a gift handed down to us by the older generation; it is a task set by them to create the world we wish to live in. And we’ve already begun to do that. We’ve decided to put our time into the social internet and now it is one of the most important tools we have. So it should never be dismissed as a waste of time. That being said, the social internet (much like the future) is never complete. We are still deciding what it is. Is it a place for businesses to flog their wares? Is it a place for friends to discuss plans or share information? Is it just a mindless distraction from the “real” world? With every like, every share, every click, we make that decision and by abstaining, by calling it a “waste of time”, you are not stopping the train; you are refusing to get on board, but don’t be surprised if in 5 years when you look around the station you realise that it’s empty.
We are the future, so we shouldn’t live in the past.
-Robert Gibbons, featured writer
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