Teens who can’t be embarrassed

last updated 8 January 2015

Meghan Daum

How do you shame a generation without shame? asked Meghan Daum. That’s the problem confronted by parents like Tommy Jordan of North Carolina, who recently discovered that his 15-year-old daughter, Hannah, was complaining profanely on Facebook that her parents treated her like a “damn slave,” because they asked her to do chores. Embarrassed by Hannah’s public display of disrespect, the dad took her laptop out to the yard, shot it nine times, and posted the video to YouTube for “all those kids who thought it was cool how rebellious you were.” The video became a national sensation—but Hannah didn’t care. She hasn’t posted any response, while her father has felt a need to defend himself at great length. There’s an “unbridgeable gap” between the generations now: Adults still cringe when a private problem is publicly aired, while for teens raised on social media, privacy is an “arcane concept.” With his video, Jordan “tried to embarrass someone who’s so accustomed to people exposing themselves online that it doesn’t occur to her to be embarrassed.” Shame? LOL!