The Not So Secret Life of The American Teenager

One of Tanita's boards

Observations on Pinterest – 4

Recently, I asked my daughter if she pins on Pinterest. She said she had created boards, but had not been actively pinning.  So then I asked her if her friends had Pinterest boards.  She cobbled together a few names for me, but told me (or informed me if you prefer Mangalorean-speak) not to get too excited, because the boards did not have much on them either.

Which made me ask the question - how could these early adopters (and frequent users) of My Space, Facebook and Twitter be on the slow boat when it came to Pinterest?

But thinking about it a little more (reflecting on it in Mangalorean-speak), it made perfect sense.

There’s an age and a stage of life when you want to categorize and save information.

And teenagers are not there yet…..

Though they eat (and my, how they eat at times), I don't think you can interest them in recipes at the moment. In fact, the time when they would be into cooking in the way that Pinteresters are rabidly interested in cooking may not come until college is over; possibly even until they exit their 20’s.

(I think back to myself and how late in life I came to cooking –you don’t want to know and you don’t want to follow my example.)

Also, most teenagers Tanita's age have no income, let alone discretionary income. And no credit cards either. So pinning fashion items would simply be torture  to them, I suppose - creating desires without any means to fulfil the same.

(Plus in Tanita’s case, what if a parent’s simplicity trip is dampening some of the enthusiasm?)

Finally, pinning is related to nesting – setting up your first home, with or without a soul-mate or spouse. And then having or adopting babies, pets or crafts.

None of this is on the near horizon for these teenagers.

(It's at the nesting stage of life when they’ll want to save the information for getting a wine stain off a cream carpet. Or getting superglue off of one’s glasses, the answer to which is revealed in my post Advice from the People we love to Hate.)

So until then, what should we expect of teenage Pinterest boards?

The regulation bicycles, backpacks, guitars, sneakers, prom dresses and updo’s?

Well, let’s take a look….

Tanita J’s Pinterest boards:

Octopi

I Love the Bay

My Photography

Culture

Typography

Ciara E’s Pinterest boards:

Weddings

Inspirational

LOLZ

Summer

Health

Nick C’s Pinterest boards:

Cars

Photos I Love

Cameras

Places I’ve Been To

Products

Caroline C’s Pinterest boards:

Cute

Books Worth Reading

Things I Want

For the Home

Bucket List

Of course since I can’t resist self-promotion, I am now going to bring the conversation back to moi and my use of Pinterest boards (since I am unsure if you got the message from my 4 previous posts on Pinterest:):))

I use Pinterest to categorize the posts on my blog.

My "Oh Bangalore" board

And since vacays are a big deal on Pinterest, I thought I’d point you in the direction of my Oh Bangalore board. 

On this board, you’ll find 3 must-read posts on Bangalore written by guest-poster Ajay Sachdev, which are as follows:

Oh Bangalore – Part 1

Oh Bangalore – Part 11

Oh Bangalore – Part 111

Warning - after reading these posts, you are probably going to want to pack your bags and head straight to Bangalore. If so, have a good trip. 

P.S. 1:  As always, thanks for reading and wishing you well in 2012.

P.S. 2:  The teenagers in this post are past or present students of Taylor Elementary School and Santa Teresa High School in San Jose.  Santa Teresa High counts among its news-making alumni, Michael Burry, the lone-wolf investor who made money off of the Housing Crash and whose story is told in the Michael Lewis book "The Big Short".

P.S. 3: The Ajay way to say "have a good trip" is to stick one's leg out when someone is walking by and then say "have a good trip". Right, Ajay? You didn't think I'd remember that from our MAA days, now did you?