Watch out youngins, here come the "Techmamas"

For the younger people who are reading my blog, those between the ages of 10 to 30, how many of you have experienced the horror of your parents, aunts or uncles, or yes even grandparents signing up for a Facebook account and adding you as a “friend?” Maybe it is the MySpace or Twitter community that your parent or older relative is joining. Regardless of what online social media community your relatives are joining, the thought of one’s elders logging on and being able to “scope out” our online lives is horrifying for most. I myself have not been lucky enough to have my mother or father sign up for a Facebook account but I have watched my friends as they freeze in horror when they receive that “You have one new friend request” message waiting in their inbox with their parent as that special new friend.

Well my friends, I have found the source of the younger generation’s panic: “Techmamas,” the online blog that teaches the mothers of the world the ins and outs of these new social media phenomenons that are captivating America’s younger population. So look out my fellow peers, as much as we would like for the social media realm to be our area of interpersonal communication it is just not the case. The very appeal to most of these social media communities is that anyone can join and communicate with others, and that anyone, to some people’s dismay, does indeed include our parents as well.

Now being a college student with a family at home in Texas that is curious what I am up to far away on the west coast, you would think that I would dislike the existence of blogs such as “Techmamas.” But actually I think the blog is quite brilliant and enjoy the founder Beth Blecherman’s attitude, ideas and overall voice on the blog. Blecherman’s blog does something similar to what I want to do with this blog: she breaks apart, analyzes, comments and provides instructions on how to deal with new trends in interpersonal communication. Beth on the other hand does it for the audience of American mothers.

Her voice is conversational yet informative, like those weekly coffee-talk sessions between moms. She uses stylish lingo such as “social media savvy moms” and “moms who tech” to refer to her readers rather than isolating them as an anomaly in a digital world that seems to be occupied by younger generations. One post that best shows her voice or style in blogging is her post from April 16th, titled “Oprah, Ashton Kutcher, Twitter and Social Media Savvy Moms.” The post is extremely short, but she supplies her readers with the knowledge that many would probably find interesting: that Oprah tweets. She writes

What do Oprah Winfrey, Ashton Kutcher, Social Media Savvy Moms have in common? They are all on Twitter! Tomorrow Oprah will tweet for the first time from The Oprah Winfrey Show. Ashton Kutcher is on a Tweetrace to get 1 million followers on Twitter. And to celebrate, TechCrunch posts about it - but the title inspired me to write a RANT over at the Silicon Valley Moms Blog.

Her clever and conversational voice provides the information of what is going on in the world of adult social media usage in an intriguing manner yet she presents the facts critically as well. Her sentences are short and to the point. She explains how news coverage on the topic has led her to “rant” on her Twitter about it. By presenting the information in a voice that can be understandable to even the most tech un-savvy readers she widens the scope of her possible audience and provides them with tech things they can do themselves (i.e. rant about their pestering teens on their Twitter accounts).

Blecherman’s voice stays constant throughout her blog as she is consistently relaying information in charming fun ways but she makes one thing clear through it all: moms can be tech savvy. The post titled, “Digital Moms Panel at Google” displays her voice very clearly. She uses adjectives such as “thrilling” to describe the panel and conveys emotions of pride and feelings of unity throughout. She refers the group with the pronoun “we” evoking unity as “moms” who communicate in the digital world. Here she describes the panel:

We sat down before the panel to say hi, and although some of us had never met live - we felt like we knew each other already from online social networking

Her voice and word choice complements the subject she is blogging about because proves the very thing that she is arguing for throughout her entire blog: that moms can and do communicate via social networking tools that their kids use.

So my fellow peers watch out. With effective sites such as this popping up on the internet giving the “how to” for adults, we may just find the social networking landscape filled with “techmamas” and “techpapas.”