KIDS THESE DAYS:

One of the benefits of my line of work is that I get to interact with people who are much younger than me. To some, this may be a nuisance, but I have found over the years that as the world changes, these people help me keep up.

These days, for example, kids often communicate anonymously. That is, they think nothing of posting an online comment or sending a publication a letter that has no name, a nickname or a name that is not theirs.

To the old schoolers, writing a letter to a newspaper or even posting something online without revealing one’s name makes the comments null and void; not suitable for publishing or posting.

But those who have kept up with this development understand that like fashion and the weather, forms of communication change.

So it does not surprise me to see anonymous posts online or to see letters to the editor in more and more newspapers published without a source.

What surprises me is the silly reaction to the folks who have not yet adapted.

It is ironic to note, for example, that a journalist may decry the use of anonymity in a letter to the editor, but may then insist on not naming a source in a story.

Once again, kids are leading the way. They have told us it’s OK to be anonymous and judging by the reaction of at least a few major publications, editors and webmasters now think it’s OK, too.

That our kids are changing the way we communicate is no surprise.

Throughout our history, improved communication has led the way to progress, whether it was grunting, drawing, formal language, the telegraph, telephone and more.

Things are different today.

New communication is a reaction to a change in our society, one that sees too many busy people with kids and work, a situation that is not likely to change any time soon.

For many kids, e-mail is passé.

Today, the preferred method of electronic communication is text messaging, mostly, I believe, because it is so portable.

But why not just telephone someone, I asked my daughter? She replied that sending a text message is something she can do in a noisy environment, in a quiet one or even on the sly. She swears she does not use her phone in class.

I’m not too concerned about what form the communication takes, as long as kids are communicating. The trouble really starts when everyone stops talking.

An argument could be made that kids have burdened us with too much communication, that thanks to their insistence on the latest communication technology, we have inboxes filled with dozens of unwanted e-mails every day and assorted other electronic junk that is being transmitted to us simply because it’s cheap and easy.

We should not mind these nuisances. As with other communication developments, there is always a catch.

And we should not mind that kids these days want to do some things differently than we did.

In any era, that is called progress.

STEVE SMITH is a Costa Mesa resident and a freelance writer. Send story ideas to dailypilot@latimes.com.