If Facebook and Twitter had been invented when we were teenagers, nothing would ever have gotten done.
It is true, we were the first generation of kids raised around the television. But we weren't glued to it. That's because there wasn't as much on television back then except for games shows and soap operas.
And cartoons but only on Saturday mornings.
Besides, our moms were hard asses who kicked us out of the house.
We didn't care because we didn't have air-conditioning.
When we were old enough to work, we got jobs. On the farm, we picked berries and bailed hay. In the city, kids had paper routes.
The lack of recreational options made us more creative with our spare time.
Some of us became activists railing against war and racism and injustice.
Others became builders and philanthropists.
Still others channeled their energy into creating business and growing wealth.
The rest just became drunks.
The world would not be nearly as interesting today if we'd grown up with video games, Farmville and Smartphones.
We would have turned into Baby Slackers, sitting on our lard asses eating tube cheese while our mothers swept the cobwebs out from under us.
Those of us who went out to get jobs would have done so because we needed money for the next edition of Grand Theft El Camino or to pay for our cell phone bills.
The telephone was not nearly as interesting when it was rotary and you had to look somebody's number up in a giant yellow phone book.
If we had been technologized, the world would have stopped at the end of our wrists -- as it does for many kids today.
I know this as a person who grew up as obsessive compulsive with a side order of addictive personality.
As a writer, I live in my head so I would have stayed in my head.
I was shy, terribly shy, so it wasn't always easy putting myself out in the world.
Perhaps I would have created an Avatar of myself instead of accepting my own reality.
Instead of joining clubs at school, I would have posted on Pinterest and shared kitty cats on Facebook.
I would have stalked potential boyfriends online instead of in my friend Sonia's car.
And being the writerly sort, I would have aspired to become the Twitter Queen of New Orleans.
Instead of haunting the library because I was a voracious reader, I would have spent hours on Wikipedia and lost myself in movies online. Instead of lurking at the mall every Saturday and buying lunch at Burger King, I would have ordered in and bought everything on Amazon.
It was a good thing that Facebook and the Internet came along decades later.
Because I'm addicted to all of it now -- even video games!
If these things were around when I was a teenager, I would have dropped out of school, gained fifty pounds and never left my mother's apartment.
I might even have taken up smoking.
Lucky me, I have technology addiction to take me into my old age.
It is true, we were the first generation of kids raised around the television. But we weren't glued to it. That's because there wasn't as much on television back then except for games shows and soap operas.
And cartoons but only on Saturday mornings.
Besides, our moms were hard asses who kicked us out of the house.
We didn't care because we didn't have air-conditioning.
When we were old enough to work, we got jobs. On the farm, we picked berries and bailed hay. In the city, kids had paper routes.
The lack of recreational options made us more creative with our spare time.
Some of us became activists railing against war and racism and injustice.
Others became builders and philanthropists.
Still others channeled their energy into creating business and growing wealth.
The rest just became drunks.
The world would not be nearly as interesting today if we'd grown up with video games, Farmville and Smartphones.
We would have turned into Baby Slackers, sitting on our lard asses eating tube cheese while our mothers swept the cobwebs out from under us.
Those of us who went out to get jobs would have done so because we needed money for the next edition of Grand Theft El Camino or to pay for our cell phone bills.
The telephone was not nearly as interesting when it was rotary and you had to look somebody's number up in a giant yellow phone book.
If we had been technologized, the world would have stopped at the end of our wrists -- as it does for many kids today.
I know this as a person who grew up as obsessive compulsive with a side order of addictive personality.
As a writer, I live in my head so I would have stayed in my head.
I was shy, terribly shy, so it wasn't always easy putting myself out in the world.
Perhaps I would have created an Avatar of myself instead of accepting my own reality.
Instead of joining clubs at school, I would have posted on Pinterest and shared kitty cats on Facebook.
I would have stalked potential boyfriends online instead of in my friend Sonia's car.
And being the writerly sort, I would have aspired to become the Twitter Queen of New Orleans.
Instead of haunting the library because I was a voracious reader, I would have spent hours on Wikipedia and lost myself in movies online. Instead of lurking at the mall every Saturday and buying lunch at Burger King, I would have ordered in and bought everything on Amazon.
It was a good thing that Facebook and the Internet came along decades later.
Because I'm addicted to all of it now -- even video games!
If these things were around when I was a teenager, I would have dropped out of school, gained fifty pounds and never left my mother's apartment.
I might even have taken up smoking.
Lucky me, I have technology addiction to take me into my old age.
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