The Technological Takeover – It’s a Generational Thing

I’m a mother of a 15-year-old grunting, smelly boy who spends a good proportion of his time in his bedroom surrounded by game consoles, tablets, and laptops. Now, in this day and age, this is not an unusual thing. I’m constantly being informed of what his friends have acquired, which games that they are allowed to have that I have banned him from playing (making me the worst parent on the planet, it would seem), and what he would like next.

A Tragedy of Immense Proportions

I realised a couple of days ago the extent to which times have changed and how much we actually take things for granted until we sit down and think about them. I heard, coming from upstairs, howls of despair, followed by a door slamming and stomping as my son stormed into the front room with a petulant look on his face. The reason? His laptop had stopped working. This, it would seem, was the end of the world as we know it – nothing would ever be the same again, and it was not something that could be practically resolved by fixing it. All reason seemed to have disappeared into the ether.

In My Day

My response to this terrible event, it would seem, was not the one that he was looking for. I pointed out that when I was his age, I did not even have a mobile phone. In fact, at that point, I did not not even have a TV in my bedroom (I think I had a stereo, and that was it as far as technology was concerned). Indeed, we all had to share a family TV. This explanation just did not go down very well. I had survived life perfectly well without all of the accoutrements that are now considered de rigueur in modern-day life. It would seem that the very idea of this is now abhorrent.

Perhaps It Wouldn’t Do Any Harm to Do Without

It has occurred to me that once in a while, a bit of time without the invasion of modern-day technologies might actually do us all a bit of good. In a world that is so focussed on everything being instantaneous and on demand, we have actually become rather expectant that this is how it always is. The modern generation especially seems to see things like Internet access as a human right, and not something to be earned. We seem to have forgotten how to entertain ourselves to a certain extent, and things like patience have gone by the wayside.

You will undoubtedly be relieved to hear that the catastrophically broken laptop only actually had a broken mouse – who would have thought it? He can now happily carry on updating his website for his car reviews and work out how to convert to WordPress in the comfort blanket of his own room without panicking about the possibility of having to go out and actually do something. I may have to unplug the Internet once a week.