Technologically Challenged

I sometimes despair at the sensory overload most of us accept as normal in 2014!  We live in an era where there are an unprecedented conglomeration of intruders into our day to day lives.  I’m not talking about the ones that hide behind a bush on a dark, stormy night and jump out when we least expect it I’m talking about technology.  Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, You Tube, Four Square.  I’m sure there’s more, I had to search Google to come up with this many!

Most of these I’m a stranger to and am determined to remain that way.  Seems that it can only create more stress in our lives if we are constantly worrying about whether we have enough ‘friends’ or ‘followers’ attached to our social media accounts and who we should share our favourite ‘posts’ with or which ones we should ‘like’ or ‘comment’ on.  I admit, I’m a Bah Humbug when it comes to sharing my life with strangers on the World Wide Web.

You see, I remember, fondly, life before technology. A childhood carefree and completely devoid of technology in the 60’s and 70’s, playing out on the front verge or in next doors’ back yard with other kids from around the neighbourhood until the sun when down.  We climbed trees, went to the beach on our own, rode our bikes for miles  sneaking into a farmers field to pick blackberries until we made ourselves sick or catching tadpoles at the local quarry and taking them home to watch them become frogs.

As teenagers we learnt to plan in advance. We couldn’t SMS or Facebook our friends to meet up as we didn’t have mobile phones or computers, shock horror! What we did have was a phone box at the end of the street or, if you were very lucky, a phone in the kitchen or hallway at home firmly attached to the wall so the whole household was in on what you were talking about. Walking was the accepted form of transport in our smallish town, so if you got to a friend’s house and no one was home, you couldn’t call mum or dad to come and get you, just had to suck it up and walk back home or sit on the step and wait.

As adults with jobs, houses and eventually families, not a lot changed until our children started school!  In the name of being progressive and ensuring that our little ones had access to the latest learning, computers were present in every classroom from Kindy onwards. My biggest nightmare had become real!

So, the revolution had begun!  I had to either join the brigade or find a hole to crawl into. So I went to Adult Education and learnt the basics so that I could keep up with my kids, but continued to refuse to have a computer in the house until they were almost teenagers. But, as with all progress, this was also inevitable. What a mistake!

From there, it was like an unstoppable flood.  My eldest daughter discovered online messaging.  The instant gratification from being able to message a friend and get an instant response was just too tempting. It was new, it was fun and it was also the biggest time waster of all time. Homework sat idle so I did what any responsible parent would do when everything else fails I pulled the plug!  I actually cancelled our internet subscription and turned off the life-sucking computer.

It was pure bliss. No more fighting over who was going to use the computer, assignments were meant to be handwritten anyway.  How would our children ever learn good handwriting and spelling skills if they did everything on a machine that spelt and grammar checked their work for them?

My husband had a mobile phone for work but I continued to resist.  I still had my phone on the wall, which now had an answering machine.  Why should I jump in?  He spent so much time on his he made up for the rest of us the kids used to call it their little brother before they realised the benefits it could bring them later on.  Eventually, it was the kids that broke me on this one too; they conspired with their father and bought me a mobile phone for Mother’s day one year.  I think the only reason was so that they could keep tabs on me, not the other way around!

Little did I know that mankind’s need to be in constant touch with one another 24/7 would be insatiable?  I wanted to stick my head back in that sand.  No Facebook for me. Why would anyone be interested in my latest clothing purchase or what time I got up this morning, and above all, I had absolutely no need to be aware of every little thing my now grown up children were doing at any given moment.  I have plenty of friends and if they want to tell me something important, we’ll have coffee what could be more civilised?

Do you wish that sometimes we could just go back a decade or two, when life was simpler and we seemed to have more time to dream?  Wasn’t it nice to be blissfully ignorant occasionally and catch on the latest gossip face to face?