From our parents having to remember their friends’ phone numbers, to us knocking on the local neighborhood kids’ doors to see if they could play, to kids now being able to use their own phone to text their friends to hang out, childhoods throughout the years have looked drastically different from one another. But what has caused the themes of our childhoods to change? The simplest answer is technology.
It’s common knowledge that we’ve come leaps and bounds in terms of technological advancements since when our parents were kids. The first cell phone was invented in 1973 and commercially released in 1983, and it was known as “The Brick” for its massive size and weight. Because of this, the adults in our lives typically relied on landlines and rotary phones and would often memorize their friends’ numbers if they wanted to call them.
“[Phones] were attached to the wall in the kitchen and had a rotary dial,” English teacher Jennifer Sayasane said. “[It was a] very big deal when my sister and I got a push-button phone in our bedroom. I still remember some of those old phone numbers.”
This is one thing we have lost with smartphones. We only have to plug in a friend’s number once, and then just tap their name whenever we want to communicate with them. We don’t have to remember the phone numbers of everyone we want to call or look them up in a phonebook. Most kids and teens now barely know their parents’ phone numbers off the top of their heads, let alone most of their friends’.
Unlike some families today, every house back when our parents were kids did not have a computer, television and phone for each person. While computers became more common in homes in the early 1990s, internet access did not until the 2000s, according to a census from 2000 released by the United States Census Bureau. Phone lines were communal and any family member could hear anyone else’s conversations. Thus, phones were not typically used as frequently as they are now.
The lack of accessible technology meant that Gen X spent more time outside. Today’s children, though, are more likely to text their friends asking if they can come over and then spend time inside and online. Gen X would run down the street, knock on their friends’ doors and then run through the neighborhood, oftentimes from early in the morning until the streetlights came on, playing all sorts of games using their imaginations, as well as some structured games like kickball and baseball.
Sayasane recalls going to the roller rink, having slumber parties and participating in Girl Scouts with her friends as a kid. Her family would go on camping trips and road trips and play games in the backyard.
“I think that going on vacations and being able to explore and play at my own pace made me curious about the world,” Sayasane said.
Curiosity is a great quality to have in our innovative and ever-changing world. When your curiosity is nurtured from a young age, it helps you grow into a well-rounded adult. However, Gen X was not the only generation to spend so much of their childhoods outside. For most of us in Gen Z, we spent the majority of our childhoods without access to technology. A voluntary poll of 156 Kaneland High School students found that 65.3% of students surveyed received a phone between 10 and 12 years of age. Similarly, 46.67% of students got social media at those ages.
“I got my first phone when I was in 5th grade, but I only used it to communicate with my parents,” senior Gianna Cellini said. “I never got into social media until middle school.”
This lack of exposure to social media helped us form our communication skills. Now, as young adults, we are able to hold conversations, albeit with less of an attention span thanks to the emergence of TikTok and other social media platforms, but we are doing far better than Gen Alpha.
With no social media as children, we came up with different ways to entertain ourselves. Similar to our parents, we communicated with our friends through the means we found most suitable.
“Before having a phone that I was able to communicate with my friends on, I would usually go knock on my friends’ doors to see if they were available to play,” Cellini said.
It’s fascinating to think about the difference a few years in age can make when it comes to childhood experiences. Most members of Gen Alpha don’t know a life without technology or phones.
“My younger brother mostly communicates with his friends on his phone and plays video games with them online, where I would spend more time playing with them in person,” Cellini said. “When I was growing up, when I would hang out with friends we would go outside to play games, ride bikes or just hang out at each other’s houses. Now I feel that more kids have access to technology, which means a lot of their socializing happens virtually.”
A common piece of advice heard by people who spend too much time on social media is to “touch grass.” This is exactly what Gen Z did as kids. We often found ourselves outside when the weather permitted, or even when it didn’t. We might have found ourselves bored, but boredom is a key to creativity. Now, however, with the world at their fingertips, children seem to never be bored.
“Whenever I [felt] bored, I would usually go play with friends or find something to do outside,” Cellini said.
While you still see kids playing outside today, there is definitely a difference when it comes to how they interact. Phones are carried around as kids adventure outside, and fun moments with their friends are interrupted by someone taking a video.
Although not ideal, letting kids use technology to keep them occupied can cetainly be convienent.
“All of my siblings are older, so they have more [extracurriculars] that I have to go to, and that increases my screen time because I don’t want to watch them,” fifth grade Blackberry Elementary School student Gianna Tingler said.
If you’re bored, the simple solution in today’s world is to reach for your phone and scroll through social media. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. We all do it, but it impacts how we learn. Face-to-face communication skills are lacking because people don’t know how to make eye contact or hold a conversation for longer than two minutes. It even becomes a struggle to sit down and work on homework or watch a show without reaching for our phones. That is just the result of the younger generations growing up with technology at their fingertips.
“I wish more kids had more unstructured play time,” Sayasane said. “I worry about shrinking attention spans.”
An advantage late Gen Z and early Gen Alpha kids have is that we had a brief moment in time where technology did not consume our lives. Only 17.3% of 150 voluntarily polled Kaneland High School students said they had a phone by the time they were 10, and most of those people got it when they were eight or nine years old.
“I grew up spending a lot of time playing with friends and interacting face-to-face with others,” Cellini said. “I feel like this helped shape my social skills and strong communication skills.”
Social and communication skills are what help us develop and maintain relationships. Whether those are friendships, romantic relationships or family connections, they are an important part of anyone’s life and a successful career. But as technology becomes a larger and more critical part of our lives, children are getting phones and iPads at younger and younger ages.
“I got [my first phone] at 10,” Tingler said. “[I got my first iPad] at four or five.”
Young children need and use phones for things that we and our parents did not. There are hardly any payphones anymore, so kids need phones to communicate information, such as when they need to be picked up after school or from other activities. This necessity has also become an easy way to communicate with friends. Unlike the communal landlines Gen X used, all of our phone calls are private, and we can text or Snapchat people as well.
For Gen Alpha, though, some people actually find calling more reliable because they can’t count on a response to a text message.
“[I mostly communicate] through calling because [with] texting, no one replies at this age,” Tingler said. “So [when] you call them and they answer, then you can plan something within the next few weeks.”
Weakening attention spans has resulted, in some cases, in kids not being able to text back because they aren’t willing to stop what they’re doing to write a response. More and more, those in younger generations send multiple text messages instead of one long paragraph because few people have the attention span to read or write a large paragraph.
In-person interactions also seem to be suffering. If you witness any conversation, there is one important thing about it: either one or both of the participants is typically gripping their phone in their hand.
It is the unfortunate truth that the way we grew up changes the way we act. Gen X is less attached to screens, and they can generally hold a conversation. Gen Z knows how to entertain ourselves when we are bored if our phones are dead, while Gen Alpha struggles with even holding a conversation.
We all have happy memories from our childhoods, whether it’s from a sunny day at the park with our friends or making up a rainy day activity. But most of these memories become more and more tainted by technology. Ask yourself: When was the last time I had a memory without my phone?
Sometimes teens forget that we are still kids too, so maybe we can put our phones away for an hour or two and act like it. We don’t have that much longer before everything changes. Touch grass, play a board game and have those silly sleepovers. Technology has made us grow up so fast, but it doesn’t have to completely change the way we communicate with those around us.
