Simpler Times, Life Before A Digital Takeover
On how glad I am I grew up in a time before mobile phones
Yesterday, my 21 year old daughter and I hit the gym together and whilst we were there another lady in our Hyrox class started to film herself working out, we were behind her so we would have been “stars” in her video. My daughters reaction was one of shock that this lady was doing this and asked me if I wanted her to ask the lady to not film me. I shuffled slightly to the left as I did not want to create a scene, but I felt extremely uncomfortable and made my excuses to the PT and my daughter that I had to check out early as I had to work in an hour, this was true but I did not want to be filmed whilst looking like a sweaty, menopausal beetroot!
It made me think about just how much we share digitally on Social Media, everything is filmed, shared and we are never free of our devices.
Social Media can be a Godsend too, it really helped me to feel less alone when I was going through my divorce and a single Mum to my two girls with literally every penny accounted for. It helped me to feel less lonely and cut off from the real world.
When we arrived home after lunch my daughter mentioned the lady filming us at the gym again and I stated that the problem with the digital age was that everything is filmed these days, people go live on Facebook and Instagram all the time, with lets have it right, a lot of live feeds. What was the point of me seeing you doing Tequila shots “live”, I know how it goes, I’ve had the hangovers!
My youngest daughter literally cannot walk down the road without a million still frame photos of her walking to Tesco to get a pint of milk with me, it does my head in. How can anyone be interested in this?
I mentioned to my eldest that she is the last generation that did not have a mobile at birth, I insisted for as long as possible that they could not have mobile phones as they were too young, much to their disgust at the time, I held on until literally it was “verging on child cruelty” their words, not mine, until they were allowed a fully functioning phone.
It made me realise how lucky I was that I was brought up before everything needed to be shared to an inch of its life. We played out from morning until night every day, I climbed trees, played run outs, knocking dollies out of bed, kiss chase, hop scotch all with the wind in our hair and grateful for the long soak at the end of the day in the bath to rid ourselves of the dirt the day had brought with it.
Later when we in our late teens, earlies twenties in the 90’s clubbing with not a mobile phone in sight, we lived in the moment. We did not have to document every single moment of our day or night, feeling the pressure to show everyone what a cool life we were living.
There was no pressure for photos or going live, having to look perfect at all times just in case. My sweaty beetroot face was allowed to be just that with no pressure, we enjoyed the moment rather than posed for it.