Keeping it Real... Kinda...

Did you see that fab clip from BBC news last week? 

After the social media ban for under-sixteens was announced, a reporter asked a young person in school uniform, what they were going to do with their extra time. 'Stare at a wall,' was the dead pan answer. A perfect response. Exactly right. No notes.

I did, unfortunately, see a bunch of random responses to that clip online. (I realise looking at responses online was my first mistake.) They were the equally sarky but far less amusing comments of, 'Oh I don't know, why don't you READ A BOOK or something.' Sigh. Perhaps the problem with social media isn't the young people looking for community and diversion. It's the adults that shout in all caps, the immediate thought that they're having, the second they're having it, without digging a little deeper into what it means.

Making my own fun, 
aged eleven. Thank
goodness I discovered
the library.

Of COURSE, I'd love teens across the country to down social media and rush straight to their local lending libraries. Of COURSE that would be a brilliant state of affairs. I spent my own young teens - pre-internet - borrowing six books at a time, working my way through each one, then days later, walking back to the village library and swapping them for six more. The specific summer holidays when I was fourteen and fifteen, were spent in that exact way. So why can't today's teens do that? Well, my local village library closed a few years back, as have others throughout the country. I've no idea how I'd pass my teen-time now. I certainly wouldn't be able to consume the amount of books I did. Likewise, when I wasn't at the library, I'd be on the landline, talking to my friends. Who has a landline these days? No one I know. What about youth clubs? Do they still exist? After the austerity years, I don't imagine so. What are young teens supposed to do with their extra free time now? I'd much rather the teen-phone ban had been part of a thought-out package of support rather than simply taking away something that many have relied on for their support networks. Meanwhile, adults can continue to access misinformation at best, brutal, illegal content at worst, and no one seems keen to regulate it. But this post isn't about the new laws about teen social media use. Being child and teen-free, I've no skin in the game. Not in the traditional sense.

Yet news stories like this should be of interest to me. I'm currently in the process of writing the Leeza McAuliffe Stories, with three books currently available. I urge you to buy them for your social-media-starved teens to stop them staring at a wall, but I digress. I should be all over any law that affects young teens. In the latest story, Leeza turns thirteen. By the time I've planned, written, and published the next book, a social media ban may well be in place. She'll be fourteen, still have her mobile phone, but won't be able to access things that she could in the past. I really need to be doing a tonne of research about this particular issue to include in the next instalment.

Except... hmmm. Maybe not. One of the things I've been intentional about is keeping technology references to a minimum. The second I mention anything real-world and current, the book is immediately dated. In the first book I mentioned her little brother was always playing Fortnite. I used that reference because two youngsters I knew back then (in 2019) were obsessed. Now they're not, and I've not heard it talked about since. It still exists, sure, but was it a sensible reference to add to a book that's supposed to represent a relatable experience of being young for years to come? Probably not. I've learnt my lesson. No more specific game references during a surge in their popularity from me.

An extract from the latest book
Leeza McAuliffe is Branching Out.

In a similar vein, I've been cautious at using social media in the stories. Leeza has a phone. I think it'd be weird if she didn't. She is, however, not allowed on social media sites as a parental rule. This is referenced in the last book (see photo) where she's fairly accepting about it. If I start mentioning Snapchat every two minutes, I'm asking for trouble. One day, in the near future, Snapchat will be for old people, and a new app will roll up. I can only mention well-established technology that's become part of the vernacular of everyone, not just the youth. This means that the youths in my books 'message' each other instead of 'WhatsApp', they share memes without the host app being mentioned, and they continue to talk in person on the school bus. Occasionally they'll FaceTime if the plot demands it, and their 'group chat' is called just that, with no mention of the social media site behind it. It's the easiest way to write fictional young people over an extended period of time. 

I've also built in some tools to make this easier. The school Leeza attends is tiny - sixty pupils, three classes, smack bang in the middle of the countryside. By creating such a specific high school experience, I can also create specific phone rules that suit the story. So whilst in the real world, secondary schools seem to be stopping phone access during the school day, I can swerve that. This school is different. (It's also fictional, which is a big help.) If I need Leeza to send a text at lunchtime to move along the plot, I can still make that happen. It also helps that I've written Leeza's family as being a bit skint. They moved to the countryside after buying a dilapidated farm house with two redundancy payouts. Things are better than they were, but there's not much spare money. That means there are no expensive devices all over the place. She has a phone, and access to a family iPad, but that's it. She uses the school library for books, helps out in the mini supermarket for pocket money, and has no real place to spend her cash in her immediate location. That helps to avoid needing to include a shed load of technology. She can't afford it so it's not there.

It's not always that simple; it's a tricky balance to find. On the one hand, I want to write authentic, relatable stories for young people to believe in. On the other hand, if I made them totally authentic with cutting edge references and up-to-date technology, I'd be giving them a tiny shelf life. I guess I'll carry on the way I'm going. Focusing on the universal themes of growing up - spots, periods, crushes, angst, school, friends, family, heartbreak, laughing 'til you burst, and working out who you are and what you love. Nothing can age those themes, and any reference to social-media law seems irrelevant. The inclusion of an accurate legal change, or all of humanity and its rites of passage experiences? I'll think I'll leave the legal stuff out of it, ta.

Have a lovely week, folks.