LinkedIn, social network for professionals and job seekers everywhere, will allow young teens to join its 225 million users as of Sept. 14. The minimum age to join will be 14 in the United States, Canada and a couple of other countries, 13 everywhere else.
And just in time for the end of summer, too. After all, it’s never too early to remind kids that, very soon, they’ll be forced to grab a rat-race bib number, just like the rest of us.
The Wall Street Journal says:
For LinkedIn, it’s less about trying to grab a group of savvy social-media kids allegedly growing bored with Facebook, and more about plying that old General Motors concept: Start out the customers young and stay with them through different stages of their lives. A college prospect with a LinkedIn account is likely to become a professional employee with a LinkedIn account a few years later.
I don’t know about you, but this creeps me out a little. I think that 13- or 14-year-olds may be a little young to join a work-centric site like LinkedIn, given that most 13- and 14-year-olds don’t work. The government restricts the hours that 14-year-olds can work to 18 hours during a school week, and there a great many jobs that they simply can’t do. Delivering pizzas, for instance. Or being President of the United States. Certainly, most youngish teens aren’t crafting resumes or polishing up their elevator speeches. At least I hope not.
Because really, despite what the culture sometimes tells us, it’s OK to be a kid for a while.
We talk a lot at Plugged In about the pressure children face to grow up. Some of that pressure comes from children themselves: What 6-year-old doesn’t think it’d be cool to be 8? What 14-year-old isn’t eager to turn 16? When you’re a little kid, it’s natural to want to be a big kid.So I guess it’s natural that businesses—who, after all, want to sell stuff, and ideally lots of it—play into that childlike desire to grow up.
We see that in the entertainment industry: Shows and movies geared at, say, 8-year-olds often have a 12- or 13-year-old at the center of the story, Because when you’re 8 you think about how cool it’ll be to be 12.
This dynamic plays out in the world of fashion, too, where girls wear makeup at ever-younger ages, it seems, and 11-year-old kids may wear stuff that’d be more appropriate for a 16- or 17-year-old (if then). Children even gravitate toward alcohol and drugs at times because using them, they believe, will make them look or act or feel older.
But even when this pressure to grow up is channeled in positive directions—like getting a good education and/or a good job—it can take on some, at least it seems to me, some troubling overtones.
College admissions are getting tougher all the time, it seems, and the cost of education is rising like an eternal soufflé. Lots of kids work extraordinarily hard to make themselves look good to college admissions folks—taking scores of advanced courses and avoiding any class (even really worthwhile ones) which might lower their GPA. Many students and their parents have colleges in mind by middle school. I just read a story about how a “college night” for fifth graders was attended by “nearly 100 anxious parents.”
Even at an age where most kids are mainly concerned with snack time, there’s still pressure—on parents. In some cities, competition to enroll kids into the best preschools (where tuition can run in the five figures) is almost laughable.
And the Internet, a catalyst for so much growth, encourages our kids to grow quickly, as well—often too quickly. Through its magic window, the Internet can introduce children to content safely kept from them in years past. (As well as some that didn’t even exist in the past.) It can introduce them to unmatched educational opportunities and bullies around the world. It can help them build skills and tear down self-esteem.
Now, it can allow us to become networking professionals before we get our drivers’ licenses. As Callie Beusman wrote in Jezebel:
Nothing says “I’ve resigned myself to all the dreary bits of adulthood; never again will I gurgle with childish joy at some delightful sight in nature; there is no such thing as magic” quite as clearly as the decision to make oneself a LinkedIn.
Hey, I get it. A good education is important, a good job’s important, and we all know that networking is important. Parents and kids should be proactive in setting down some plans.
But it’s good to spend some time as a kid, too. Sure, in some ways, these kids may be ready to grow up. But if they spend their time polishing their resume at 14 instead of playing soccer or hanging out at the mall, they might regret it later on.
Recent Comments