At Amnesia, we like to think we’re pretty in the know when it comes to things digital. In walks in a 15-year-old who couldn’t imagine images without hashtags and scoffs at our ignorance to the meaning of tbh.

“To be honest…cheh”

Rachel doesn’t remember a time before the Internet, or for that matter before social media, and admits that her generation’s relationship to it borders addiction and displays the traits of narcissism.

Take ‘Likes for Likes’ as an example. These are Facebook posts which bait ‘likes’ in return for words of praise (or sometimes less kind words) in the form of wall posts from the post’s publisher.

Or albums dedicated to self portraits, more often than not girls pouting or posing in their bikinis, all with the hope of attracting that all important ‘like’.

But is it addiction or narcissism if it’s the norm?

Sure, for us Gen-Y’s (we’re getting old now people) posting ‘selfies’ with the expectation of attracting thousands of likes and accumulating friends like they were going out of fashion, is behaviour that is not only foreign but fanatical.

Yet can we truly label this up and coming generation narcissistic without performing some due introspection?

I’m pretty sure the last time I checked, within my increasingly brand dominated newsfeed, my friends were posting albums of weddings, baby pics, Eiffel Tower shots and ‘pets doing cute things’. Sure these images aren’t likely to attract thousands of likes, but if not for the sake of attention than what?

Saying we have a generation coming through that is narcissistic is not only crediting the technologies they use but is a form of shifting the blame otherwise known as technological determinism.

Technological determinism tells us that it is technology that drives social change, not the other way around. I have never been a huge fan of this theory, as I’d like to think that humans are autonomous beings that have the capacity to govern their own social change and develop technologies depending on their changing needs.

Either way, there is a stark difference in the use of social media between generations and whether this is simply a question of maturity, we would be silly to shun it or deem it deplorable without taking the opportunity to learn something new.

Like Snapchat! Woah, where did that app come from? According to Rachel, it’s what all the cool kids are using and we’re desperately behind with the times.

Snapchat taps in on the image sharing phenomenon but rather than being another image archive, this app allows a person to take and send a picture and decide how long it is visible by the person who receives it. After a maximum of 10 seconds, the picture disappears and can’t be seen again.

My natural thought process landed on the more x-rated possibilities this app affords.

And despite the mainstream media’s ‘sexting’ accusations, co-founder Evan Spiegel defends his app as being just another form of communication.

Hmmmm. Riiiight.

Sexting aside, at Amnesia we jumped on it like a fat kid in a candy store and shared our new found wisdom to our relatively small pool of friends.

Rachel’s generation is still very young and, online or offline, is only beginning to mark its territory on society.

If there’s one thing we have in common though, Rachel put it nicely:

“I don’t like brands on Facebook unless there’s something in it for me.”

True story bro.