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In their critique of my healthy cafeteria meals solution years ago, a MAANG interviewer believed parents comfortably paid for kids’ school lunches.
“Why would the student be handling payments on their phone?” as if to find that ridiculous.
The class differences shocked me, practically rendering me speechless.
I’ve seen much in my own lifetime. Some parents exploit their tween’s identity to max out credit cards. Some teens take on financials and legalese in place of their immigrant guardians. I personally knew a middle schooler (less than 15 years old) who was immensely smart. However, and as it turned out, her peers, including myself, discovered along the way that their parents would call them, drunk from parties, needing a designated driver.
I only discovered the events of the last case after that middle schooler became a high schooler who was absent from class one day. It was then that I learned they ended up in the hospital with alcohol poisoning through their friend. Both were barely 16 years old.
While the MAANG design challenge focused on healthy eating for high schoolers, what I had seen and lived through were depressed, lonely, and unwell teenagers searching for purpose, direction, and connection. This is not unlike what I’ve seen rampant in Silicon Valley with full grown adults. Even a very popular engineering leader dad from a top ranked, specialized tech school recently told me that putting “vaccinated” in my profile would be “too political” – his words, not mine.
Meanwhile, the U.S. is currently experiencing its worst measles outbreak in 35 years. Plus, teen accounts are widely available for some services as some countries, such as Australia, France, and Spain, work to ban social media for youths.
Ain’t it funny how technology and politics work. (sarcastic)