Irritation #531

I become quite irrationally agitated with the “back in my day” mentality.  Which is kind of ironic since I am obsessed with how much stuff has changed since I was a kid.  But Facebook is full of meme’s that make me INSANE:

-         We weren’t disrespectful to our parents cuz the would hit us with whatever was available for smarting off

o   Was that really respect or the desire not to get beaten? I go with that was fear

-         We didn’t need cell phones to find people we just look for a pile of bikes on someone’s lawn

o   Sure you can see where all your friends are but how many blocks did you have to walk to figure it out – feel like it is more efficient to just text

-         We didn’t have carseats when I was a kid and we turned out just fine

o   This is soooo ridiculous – it’s the same as the “no one cooks anymore they only microwave” (which is true in my case) but to not take advantage of the leaps in technology would be insane.  No sir I won’t listen to your fancy high quality music device – I prefer the scratchy vinyl sound

-         We didn’t have TV or Video Games – we had the outside

o   Well I am not sending my kid out unsupervised with the potential for a predator to come strolling down the street and I have my own crap around the house to do so I can’t hang outside all day

Times have changed.  That is a good thing.  It means we as a species are continuing to evolve and improve.  I am not naïve enough to think that everything developed in the last 100 year has been a stellar success and had a positive impact on humanity but I am also not naïve enough to think that the 1980s were the best of times and everyone was deliriously happy and no need for any more discoveries.

I get that in a big picture approach people that use these examples are sometimes just highlighting how fast and complex things have become relative to where they were as kids.   Just like I am quite sure my grandparents were flummoxed (fabulous word!) by the changes they saw in their life time. But I feel the tone is not one of awe or amazement more of judgment.  Maybe fear of all this technology?  Or not relating to the “kids” anymore is driving this attitude?

I went to a seminar about marketing across generations and in it I learned that Generation Edge – those that were born from 1995 to present – will have a higher IQ than any generation before it.  That lightning fast is not fast enough. Because of them growing up with four different devices feeding them information at the same time, their ability to multitask will be off the charts.

Like it or not – this is the direction of the future.  Denying it exists or not allowing your children to have appropriate exposure will only hurt you and them. So hang up your nostalgia for a life without smartphones or at least acknowledge that the way we are going is not all bad and smile when you hear your kids tell your grandkids:

Back in the day we didn’t get to teleport – we had to drive in crap traffic if we wanted to get anywhere