Kids Today

Every generation has its things that make older people look at them and say, “We never had/did anything like that in my day, why do you need it now?” In the past, it was often music: Elvis Presley in the ’50s, classic rock in the ‘80s. For our generation, that thing is often technology.

Many of our parents and grandparents have fond memories of growing up without technology, although there are certainly some not-so-fond ones as well. Many of them believe that because we have all of this technology, we have lost something of what made growing up special, and while I agree with that to some extent, I also believe that we all look back on the past with rose-tinted glasses, and that even though some things have changed, they are not as different as they might seem.

            In the three interviews I conducted, there were a number of common threads. Fittingly, my grandfather was the one that spoke most nostalgically about life before technology, calling growing up without it “very pleasant.” In all three interviews, a major point was that before technology, information required a lot more effort to access. You could not just Google a question and find a half-dozen answers to it already online; in order to get sources and information for research papers, you had to go to a physical library, sometimes having to wait days for the book you needed to be shipped from another library, making it significantly harder to write last minute. One of the biggest complaints I heard was also on the topic of writing, namely using typewriters. Two of the interviewees mentioned how hard it was to correct a paper if you made a mistake, sometimes even having to type a whole page over again, depending on when you noticed your error.

            The interviews also mentioned how different the ability of parents to communicate with their children is today, and how much simpler dating is with the advent of cell phones and texting. In the past, if you wanted to talk to your significant other, you had to pick up the (corded) phone and call them, and do nothing else for as long as you were communicating. Now, it is a simple matter to text each other at the same time as doing homework or chores or almost anything else, really. In addition, it is easier now than it was when they were growing up for parents to keep track of their children’s whereabouts. Before, if you were out with a car, going to the movies or out to dinner, for example, your parents just had to trust that you were going where you said you were. Now, cell phones let parents contact their children any time, and even let them locate them with GPS tracking, in some cases. As the article “Technology is a Game-Changer in the Lives of Today’s Boys” states, “just 23 years ago…[kids] used to ride [their] bike alone for miles…to visit an arcade or a friend’s house…parents [today] are more protective than baby boomers were” (Achen 1). This style of parenting is aided significantly by the new ability to be in constant contact.

            Despite all of these differences, however, it seems to me that kids today are still growing up more similarly than not to how they did in the past. In my childhood, I played plenty of video games, but always with friends, and that was rarely all we did. Generally the vast majority of my free time was spent outside, building things, exploring the world, and just generally being physically active. My brother, who is 5 years younger than I, goes outside to play just as much as I did when I was younger, maybe even more, even though I introduced him to video games at an early age and he has never stopped playing them regularly. Maybe kids today aren’t outside quite as much as they used to be, but many, if not most, of them have not given up on being what adults envision a child should be.

Works Cited

Achen, Paris. "Technology Is Game-changer in Lives of Today’s Boys." The Columbian. The Columbian, 26 Dec. 2011. Web. 31 Jan. 2012. <http://www.columbian.com/news/2011/dec/27/wired-differentlytechnology-is-game-changer-in-liv/?print>.