Being born in 1989 gave me the chance to enjoy an early childhood free of the trappings of most of todays far reaching technology trends.
I remember having analog toys as a child. My parents were not big into tv so we didn’t have one in the house, the computer dial up connection was too noisy and slow to bother with. Imagination was a must.
I’m also fortunate that as household and hand held technology started to gather pace, as a teenager, I was at an age that I could absorb it and benefit from it.
The news is awash with articles, studies and findings, often conflicting, around the impacts of technology and content exposure and the potential risks and benefits it can have especially for young people.
It’s not often that I’m shocked, but now and again something will really highlight how quickly technology has changed behaviours that until very recently would be completely normal… yesterday I learned of a “new trend” now apparently referred to as “raw dogging”… this practice involves depriving yourself of access to your phone, tv, music, for long periods of time, typically on long haul flights. And is becoming a viral trend fuelled by young influencers (the irony).
I like to think that I’m not THAT old, I still remember getting onto a plane for a long haul flight and the entertainment was a single drop down screen half way down the plane with a single film playing on loop. Not long ago, we sat down on a plane or a train or on a bus without our headphones on and said hello to the person sat next to us, because it was you and them and nothing else for the rest of the journey!
Now if you are able to sit for more than a few hours without being force fed content you are an influencer superhero. The younger generations of course claim that this is a revelation that they have discovered while the older generations roll their eyes knowing it’s something that has been lost.
I guess it doesn’t matter either way, as long as we don’t lose touch of the importance of indulging in time away from the trappings of modern technology and the value of social Interaction.
I could go on and on! Keen to hear your thoughts…
#technology #social #communication #travel