I didn't have a computer until I was almost 12, and didn't have the Internet until just before I turned 15. This was pretty normal amongst my friends, too. And I am convinced that it had huge consequences on how we grew up. I was absolutely obsessed with reading for a solid 90 percent of my pre-adult life. We were forced to use our imaginations for entertainment, forced to use phones to call each other and have conversations, forced to rely on primarily expressing ourselves in person instead of through a Myspace or Facebook page (AIM profiles eventually became our first mode of virtually representing ourselves, but again, that wasn't until junior high school at the earliest). When computers did become more common in the household, they weren't like the archaic Apples from the elementary school computer lab (NUMBER MUNCHERS!), but they definitely weren't as pimped out as computers today. We had some shitty games that were essentially computerized arcade games like Centipede and Asteroids (with the non-shitty exceptions of Oregon Trail and Dr. Brain) and when my parents finally caved in and got us the internet, social networking websites had barely emerged and most people had crappy little tripod sites and didn't tend to do as much, say, shopping online as today. It was fascinating and yet strangely boring at the same time. Fascinating that such a thing existed, boring because it still kind of sucked.
In any case, we still tended to be a little creative when it came to hanging out. You could put little quotes and stuff in your AIM profile and hope that people you wanted to think you were cool would read it and confirm that they did indeed think you were cool. I mean, most of my friends and I didn't even have cell phones until well into high school. So no texting, no sir, actual verbal conversation was required. What I'm trying to say is that I think that I missed being part of Generation Stupid by only a few crucial years. These kids have had stuff like the Internet crammed down their throats since they were drinking from sippy cups and have had cell phones since they were, like, eight. That's a lot of media exposure. And when you think about the media currently and how it is painfully obvious that one can become famous and wealthy either by physically doing stupid things, actually being a complete idiot (reality TV, anyone?), or just being deemed spectacularly good-looking, it's no wonder that these kids are not in any way inclined to think deep thoughts. They also seem to have crippling self-confidence issues, beyond those I've ever seen in younger people before. I think it has something to do with the fact that they put so much effort into expressing themselves two ways: the first, through crap like fashion and makeup and sneakers and the like, and the second, through stuff like Myspace and the German version of Facebook for high school kids. They spend so much time constructing their virtual personalities that they completely forget to develop their actual personalities. It's been months and I still feel like the eight grade are basically shells of people. They are literally all monumentally mind-numbing.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I am incredibly biased and, with my friends, just barely managed to escape from the insipid onslaught of Generation Stupid. But I am not convinced that being so thoroughly dependent on technology from birth is at all a good thing.
More on this later, I need to mull it over some more and write some sentences that are slightly more coherent. I'm cracked out from lack of sleep, so sue me if I barely represent the degree in English that hangs askew in my parents' basement.
