Seventy-seven percent of middle-age Americans (35-54 years old) say they want to return to a time before society was “plugged in,” meaning a time before there was widespread internet and cell phone usage. As told by a new Harris Poll (via Fast Company), 63% of younger folks (18-34 years old) were also keen on returning to a pre-plugged-in world, despite that being a world they largely never had a chance to occupy.
I agree with the commenters who said people miss certain things but forget about convenience of the connected world. I wanted to add that people likely misattribute their nostalgia to unconnected world because they were kids. It felt great being a kid not because we were pre-internet, but because we were kids. We had no bills to worry about. We’d always have food. And that was the only food we ever knew about so we loved it. Our worries were to just have enough time in the day to play all the cool things with friends and explore the world. We didn’t feel guilty for just playing video games the whole day or hanging out with friends the whole day. Our bodies could fall from a tree and our bruises would heal in a week. We’d find a motherfucking ant and be fascinated by it for hours! Have you tried staring at ants now? It’s mindnumbingly boring. Of course we miss the way we felt when we were kids. Technology ha nothing to do with it. Every generation misses being a kid.
“middle-age Americans (35-54 years old)”
35 is middle-aged??
American healthcare.
I feel like, for the 35-54 bracket at least, this must be less about giving up all the modern conveniences we have today but more about wishing they could raise their children in that simpler time. You don’t want your kids to be left out of what’s new and cool but you also don’t want them exposed to EVERYTHING these platforms bring. It’s a tight rope to walk and I’m not looking forward to it when my kids are older. I know a lot of people who have gone down the road of, “I didn’t have a cell phone growing up, my kids won’t either.” But it’s not very realistic in today’s world.
I agree with your assessment. I have a lot to say about this, and I’m glad to have found this article, as I’ve been having some serious inner turmoil about this lately, and this makes me feel a bit like I’m not totally alone or crazy. (But also I can’t find a link to the original survey, which makes it hard to trust, as I can’t find any description of the methodology or the exact wording of the questions)
I’m an older Millenial (sometimes consider Gen X, depending on the terminology used) with young kids. It’s true that I would rather have them brought up 30 years ago than today. Sometimes when I see posts about parents letting their young kids (like let’s say 10) have their own smartphone and then complain about, people get snarky like “You’re the parent. If you don’t like it, just take their smartphone away.”
But it is a tightrope to walk. I don’t want them expose them something like Instagram, which gives them eating disorders, depression, anxiety, chips away at their sense of privacy, etc. But I also don’t want them to be “the weird kid” who can’t relate to any of their peers. When I was growing up, I remember "the weird kid"s who weren’t allowed to watch TV, weren’t to play video games, etc. I can recognize that in many ways they probably benefited from not sitting in front of the TV for hours each day, but I can also recognize they probably didn’t benefit from not being able to talk to any of the rest of us about the latest episode of Fresh Prince. I do see it as a balancing act between teaching them that there’s a lot about their generation that sucks, but also letting them experience enough of it to see for themselves, and relate to the other kids around them.
