I had a jarring realization about technology and my parents recently. My mom went out of town for the weekend and my dad asked me if he could use my phone charger, overnight, for the entire weekend. I was so taken aback and startled by his request. First of all why didn't he just have his own? Secondly did he understand that I needed to charge my phone overnight?
This seemingly absurd request and my reaction to it made me really sit and think about the different ways that my parents and I see our phones. If you look hard enough I think you'd start to see the same kind of trends with your parents.
My parents plug their phones in in the kitchen every night...and then go up to bed. They leave the phones in the kitchen. I cannot begin to imagine not falling asleep to the piercing glow of my iPhone. I can't imagine not locating the nearest outlet in relation to my bed. My parents each spend a good hour every morning without their phones. It takes me 30 seconds from the time I wake up to start checking my emails, iMessages, CNN updates, and all social media notifications.
My parents can't text in full sentences. My mom's latest text to me was, "What you doing? Miss me." That's it. Limited punctuation and no context clues. What are you trying to say here, mom? Did your phone die in the middle of the message? Am I suppose to send help?
I like to remind both of them that they do, in fact, pay for unlimited texting so there's no need to skimp on words or sentences. I also ask them if they send emails like this and they tell me they do not. So it's purely a phone quirk.
These quirks aren't weird for either of us, but when you set them side by side and do a straight comparison, the difference in ideals is startling.
It's strange that my generation exists in a time that lived through the injection of technology into everyday life. We remember what it was like to be sent outside in the summer to play make-believe. We also recall growing up with a computer and the Internet. We remember finally receiving a cell phone as a rite of passage when we reached a certain age.
We have a strange mix of nostalgia for an imaginary childhood and fully wired adolescence.
I don't have a single friend who doesn't sleep within arm's reach of their cellphone. I don't know anyone my age whose first action of the day isn't to check their phone. For most of us our phones are our alarms, organizers, and straight I.V. drip into the digital world.
Our phones are another limb. It is a physical part of us that we have trouble separating from. Our parents don't have this issue. They have an ingrained defense against phone integration. They argue it's a healthier way to live. I argue that that isn't a possibility for my generation. Plus, I like falling asleep to Tumblr; it gives me happy dreams.
