Technology Gap

I want to shed some "lyte" on technology today.  I was coming out of the library (yes I read actual books printed on paper!) and saw a 3 year old child strolling by talking on a Bluetooth.  Now, it wasn't actually operating, he was just holding it to his head, babbling away.  No doubt he was imitating either mom or dad, or both.  

And I started thinking about my own kids and this whole new generation that has grown up connected to technology in a way that previous generations never had.  Cell phones, video games, personal computers, are pervasive in our culture now.  I watch as kids tweet, IM, text, and interact on MySpace, all simultaneously.  I can't blog and listen to music at the same time.

Then I see the differences on how we approach technology.  Give a kid a new phone, and they will just start using it.  Same with a new computer program or a website.  My generation is locked into using that relic of the past, the no-longer-relevant owner's manual.  We want to read about how to operate something before we actually operate it.  My children just dive right in and figure it out on the fly.  We are much more tentative, afraid of making a mistake.

Now, there are all sorts of doomsayers out there, warning us that this plugged-in generation has no people skills, no understanding of one on one relationships.  But I beg to differ.  When I pick my kids up from their high school, I am struck by how much hugging is going on.

Yes, I said hugging.  They hug each other hello, and they hug each other goodbye.  I have yet to see two guys hugging as a greeting, but the girls hug and the opposite sexes hug.  This behavior crosses all the social caste lines.  Jocks hug. Geeks hug.  Skaters hug.  Even Goths hug.  When I was in high school, you were allowed to hug your boyfriend, but hug everybody?  Eeewww!!!

So while we have on the one hand, a very technically savvy generation, they also are very physically demonstrative as well.  Some will say these two behaviors have combined in the practice of "sexting", sending pictures of oneself in sexually provocative poses, but so far my kids texts revolve around the same stuff we passed notes about.  Who likes whom, what are are you doing right now, I hate this class, the same pedestrian, self-absorbed minutiae that all teenagers of all generations find so fascinating.  

Hey, maybe that gap isn't so wide after all....