LOVE IN 21st CENTURY

I had never asked myself how love is in these days or how it will be in the future. When I was child I listened to my family their opinion about love. My grandparents said that the relationships between people were different when they were young. And when years went by, my parents said a similar thing. Then, does love change with time? I don’t think so. The feeling is the same, because people need love. We need the contact with people, the interaction. But I think the way to achieve these things is different actually than in the past. This is logical because the way of life changes continuously. If we compare our environment with the world twenty or fifty years ago, we find differences, for instance, the kind of technology around us and the use that we give it, besides others situations and things.

The typical family has changed and many different kinds of families have appeared, single mothers or fathers, two fathers or mothers, grandparents with their grandchildren, couples with children of different father or mother, couples, a group of friends… Of course, every person expresses love in his own way and it also depends on the individual or family situation. I don’t know if it’s now easier or more difficult than before because I can’t compare but I think the feeling is the same. The distances and the society force us to look for new ways to communicate and show our feelings and it will be interesting to see how we will be able to solve it.

Anyway, someone told me if when we remember a year, we don’t cry of happiness or sadness, we haven’t lived that year. I think that sentence expresses the meaning of love without time, because when we remembered a year, we use to remember our friendships, couples, children and relationships between people. Feelings of love, passion, hate, sadness, happiness and others are very important for us because we need them to wake up every day in the morning.

The merchants of cool

Being a teenager is difficult. TV and music influence teenagers and send them messages about how they should be cool. But, who decides that? Who decides how to be cool?

In one hand, companies and TV want to sell their products because teenagers are a potential and big market to buy anything. When you watch TV, advertisments tell you that you are not thin enough or not pretty enough. They tell you clothes that you have to wear for being cool or how to smell. In the other hand, a teenager has to combine his own opinion with the opinion of his friends, TV, his favourite music groups.

Nowadays, there is a symbiotic relationship between the media and teenagers. It exists the example of MTV. This channel has TV programs and music videos for young people. The true is that these videos sell them a life style. Moreover, the companies monopolizes the system and that provokes that the same thing is sold by TV, radio, newspapers, magazines…because a big company owns different places where they can advertise their products.

And, where are adults in the media? In TV series, they show adultified kids that make their own decisions. In the documentary "The merchants of cool", they talk about TV series like Dawson's Creek or Buffy, the vampire slayer, where it's true that main characters are teenagers and they make decisions like if they were adults. In that way, they will decide how and why they spend their own money. But the marketing has to be attractive for them. For that reason, companies ask teenagers what they want and what they think it is cool or not.

Then, who decides? I don't know, because it's a vicious circle.