A couple of incidents have had me musing over my childhood and teenage years these last few days. Firstly, a wine night with my school mates resulted in some photo album reminiscing (why did we all dress like men in the 90's?!!), and then I bumped into a friend whose five year old was having her nails done and sparkly tattoos put on. ("We didn't have those in our day did we, we only had mud to play with in the ‘70s".)
Well, it wasn't that bad, but it got me thinking - what did a child of the ‘70s/’80s and teenager of the '90s DO?
Much to my 18 year old sister's horror we only had 4 TV channels, no internet and no mobiles. Like, yaaaaawn. We had one landline in the house, so calling friends/long haired boyfriends meant arranging a time to ring and hours of huddling up the stairs halfway to stop family overhearing. Oh, and a large phone bill to impress the rents. No mobiles, so no texting, no options out of meeting and no impersonal dumping/flirting/lazy socialising. I mean, can you imagine? If you wanted to finish with someone you had to actually at least call them, or meet in person to do the deed. These days a simple Facebook status update with do. And it's so damned public.
In my day we had actual photos to look at, not digital images, no no. We had to wait and wait for the postman to drop our prints through the letterbox after a week of hoping the film wouldn't get lost in transit. No checking out shots for profile pics, no vain self-posed My Book Space numbers, just snap happy pics to file away for a girly night in 2010 when you are older and drunk enough to get them back out again.
We had 4 channels but I tell you youngster, we watched what was on. We sat and took it in, we didn't Tweet/Facebook/MSN whilst watching Party of Five, My So Called Life or The Chart Show. Oh, and the charts! They meant something! We waited until Sunday for the official Number One, we waited for the Indie Chart show on a Saturday morning to know which records - yes, records - to go out and buy. You heard right. Go. Out. And Buy. Not sit and download, we had to work for our indie kid tunes.
A ‘90s teenager goes for a night out. This involves a complex network of calls, my girls and I had a pattern we used to work to, system if you will. And people either came out or they didn't. We couldn't text to change venue or duck out. We had to be there or you know, not be there. Very black and white but simple. Binary in fact. It worked for us.
When I went to Paris on my own at 17, I didn't know where I was staying. I hadn't checked out on Trip Advisor the state of the place, or negotiated the best flights online. I walked into the travel agents, booked a flight and went. I had no mobile, so no-one could contact me unless I wanted to be contacted, no travel blog to record my wanderings, and no geotag to tell you where my hashtag was at.
Now I may sound like I am nostalgic for the good old days, and despite my love of technology in some ways I am. I have LinkedIn and Facebook profiles, four email accounts and two Twitter accounts so I am not shy of the new ways, but it's so hard to switch off these days.
It feels like an arm or leg had been amputated to go out without my iPhone, and I am convinced my business will crumble if I don't check my Tweets regularly. We have a fear today of missing out, of not being in the know - yet there is so much going on we are swamped by information, how can we possibly keep up?
Being socially networked means the world is a smaller place and everything seems possible But you know what, I believed anything was possible in my younger year, too. At least any relationship mistakes I made were done in the real world without falling for any idiots I met online. Any oversharing was done with friends not my entire Twitter following crowd, and if I looked good or bad depended on seeing me on a good or bad day, not being impressed by an image online.
I can't begin to imagine what technology will be here when my daughters are older, but I fully intend to occasionally teach them the benefit of yanking out the plugs from time to time and sign off to see the real world on either side of the screen.
Image from My So Called Life © ABC