How Memes Can Be Used to Effectively Communicate with Teenagers

While their parents, grandparents, and teachers find their news on channels such as Facebook and Twitter, teens of this generation get theirs from memes on Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, as well as Facebook.

There’s no question that teens enjoy playing video games or hanging out with like-minded friends they find on ESPA or other digital communities. But teens can become so focused on their digital lives that they become disconnected from the real world.

In January 2020, award-winning writer, Jennifer L.W. Fink, shared how she was dismayed to learn from news on Facebook that powerful Iranian commander Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani was killed in an American drone attack. She knew this could result in a war.

Imagine her shock when her sons arrived home from school, laughing about how they were ready for war, thanks to countless hours of “training” they received from video games such as Call of Duty and Fortnite.

Knowing she couldn’t lecture her kids about how damaging a war can be as they’d simply allude to their video games, Fink found a way to achieve her objective by searching for appropriate memes.

By using memes to connect with her boys, Fink explained the consequences of war without boring them with a lecture. For the kids, it was still light-hearted talk about a subject that they didn’t really consider something worth getting scared about.

Memes for More Effective Communication

Let’s face it. Teens of this generation were born into a world where instant gratification is so easy to achieve.

If they get hungry in the middle of the night, they can just pop something into the microwave or order pizza delivery online.

They don’t even have to walk to the telephone booth with coins or phone cards in hand to make a call — they just pick up their cellphones. And cellphones these days can be used for just about anything.

It’s not really anyone’s fault. Teens were just born into this modern society. But if you’re trying to talk to them about something difficult to raise, try doing it with a meme.

Loaded with visual content and clever words, memes might be difficult for older generations to process, but they’ve become the language of teens. It seems that they have a meme for everything.

Have you noticed how younger kids also relate to memes? You don’t even have to explain it to them. In fact, you’re more likely to be the one who didn’t catch the meme’s message. Feeling old, huh?

Teens Vent Their Feelings Through Memes

For generations, teens have always been regarded as the ones who are disconnected from others. In fact, teen rebellion is part of human development.

The teen stage can be confusing: You’re too old to be a kid and depend on your parents yet too young to be independent and make life-changing decisions. This leads to confusion that’s often associated with anger or feelings of guilt.

But today’s generation of teens has found a way to express themselves and vent their feelings by using memes. Somehow, digitally created memes give them a sense of belonging and community with other like-minded individuals.

Knowing that these memes are so popular, teens love to share them on social sites.

Memes have become a way for them to express how they feel or think without fear of being humiliated. After all, they could simply laugh a meme off as something they shared because they found it funny, not because they actually felt the same way.

With so many meme-generation apps available at their fingertips, teens enjoy a sense of liberation as they create memes to voice their thoughts or opinions.

Teens know that digital culture doesn’t dig too deep to establish who posted the meme first. This sense of anonymity makes them feel powerful and that they can do whatever they want.

Positives and Negatives of Meme Creation

While memes started as satirical or comic pieces used by content creators to express their feelings, memes have evolved to become a powerful tool in today’s communication landscape.

Even brands have jumped on the bandwagon and decided to use memes for their social media campaigns! Understanding their target audience, brands create ads disguised as very-relatable modern memes on trending topics.

Outlet for creativity

Memes allow you to express your creativity. Remember the funeral guys meme? So many related GIFs and photos continue to circulate on social media about this meme. But the original video was actually a serious one taken from an actual funeral.

The coffin dance that these pallbearers did was actually part of Ghana’s culture. They believe that someone’s death should be celebrated because it’s a homecoming.

But the coffin dance went viral and was later used in massive campaigns urging people to stay at home and follow protocols amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Way to escape reality

With online repositories containing billions of memes from different, primarily anonymous creators, one could spend hours just browsing the web for these relatable images and GIFs. For many teens, this is a way to escape reality. It makes them laugh even while they’re alone in their bedrooms.

Outlet for misinformation

Considering how they spread so easily, memes have also become an outlet for misinformation. Nowadays, it’s simply too difficult to filter out fake information because of memes.

While intelligent AIs of Facebook and Google can detect misinformation in texts and even videos, it’s harder for them to filter out memes because the texts and images or videos are overlaid in a meme.

Indeed, memes have changed the landscape of social media communication. Have you indulged in creating memes as a means to escape reality, too?