It’s confession time. As a teenager, I was lazy. It’s true. I watched too much tv. I slept in. I had to be threatened with punishment before I’d clean my room, pick up a broom, or dust something. I did my homework quickly and with the fewest steps possible–if I did it at all. I also procrastinated; writing reports the day before they were due and often scribbling away at algebra during the lunch break before my 5th period class. I, dare I say, was a pretty normal teenager. Unfortunately, I don’t have any real research upon which to base my opinion. I can only say that I generally saw my friends, my sisters, and other kids at school behaving pretty much the same way.

Luckily for me, my future, and my parents’ hearts and sanity; I snapped out of it. I went to college, I got a job, I paid my bills. Eventually I got a Master’s degree and one of those jobs that parents are pretty proud of. Again, I don’t have much research on that, but I’m told my Dad keeps one my business cards in his wallet so he can show it to his friends.

I have always been under the impression that most teenagers are just different from adults. Not bad, just different. They see the world differently. Their life experience is vastly different. They have different accepted values and norms. It’s just a different culture and I’ve been taught repeatedly that you can’t force change on a culture. In fact, I’ll go out on a limb and suggest that, instead, cultures influence change.

This is why I am so heartbroken when I hear about libraries trying to change the way teens operate in order to make them come to the library. Some teens will come and they will carry with them long-lasting memories of all they learned and experienced there. But this is 2005 and that sense of the physical place is not always a high priority for today’s teens. Heck, it’s not necessarily a high priority for today’s 35-year-old. The life experience for today’s teen is one in which the Internet has always existed. Online technology has made it possible for people today to patronize businesses without ever having to walk in their doors. Why do we feel compelled to change them? What if, instead, we tweaked our services to work with their culture?

What is the risk? What is the potential?

GinaP