We fear the unknown. Inexplicable phenomena trouble us, and this incomprehension almost always drives us to hate. Strange rashes appearing on our body, whispers that follow you into every room, and then there is Skibidi Toilet. Yes, what the media has to offer can also very much become the stuff of our nightmare. But just as learning the rashes are simply an allergic reaction, the whisper is the phone in your pocket set on minimum volume; dispelling the incomprehensible needs not hate but understanding.

Despite society’s attempt to control youths’ access to electronic media (e-media), a total disconnection from it is nigh on impossible. Notwithstanding the peer pressure for students to catch up with the trend, countless schoolwork requires students to make use of e-media to learn. On top of necessities, e-media also stands to offer a world of knowledge to anyone with a mind to learn, just imagine how often we Google the use of different office software functions. To conquer that fear of what our youth is learning via e-media, we must consider joining them and experiencing with them.

Please note though, when I say join them, I mean it with all our heart. Not judgmentally rebuking everything because we know better, but an open mind that tries to understand what’s happening. Saying it would be difficult is an understatement, we are undoubtedly from different generations. Yet if we successfully partake in our youth’s e-media, what we get is a key to their world; that would allow us to interact with them on their own terms, and more importantly to navigate their experience from a stance of understanding, instead of being dismissed because we simply “don’t get it”. By “getting it”, we not only dissipate the shroud of the unknown, but we also turn it into our tool for leading and sharing with the youth.

It may be a thankless task, the young despising the old in trying to join them; a mind-numbing task, going through hours of apparently meaningless or poorly humoured content; an exhausting task, squeezing that miniscule of our me-time to follow what our youth is following. Yet, in exchange, we get a chance to know what our youth is spending time on, interested in, talking about. Isn’t that a way to ward off evil? To know that there was no evil to begin with.