Our lives are indisputably affected and transformed over the decades. In what way? Well that's what we are going to find out in this article. If you were born in the late 70's you certainly had a very active and memorable childhood. Do you remember back with a good grace? I bet you do.
I was born in 1977 and I have to admit that I had a very happy and unforgettable time as a child with lots of good friends around me. It doesn't mean that I don't have friend today. I have of course and the most beautiful part of it is that I still have my old friends since I was 6-8 years old. Now that's what I call true friendship. Oh yes they are still my best friends.
If you were born in the late 90's or later your childhood is definitely different from mine. I am not saying that you are not happy or you don't have friends and your youth is probably active and will be memorable too, but still different.
Here is when modern technology comes in and how it has changed and still changing our lives. You see when I was young our only communication was face to face spoken words. Yes real conversations. The only way we could contact was when we actually met each other in person. Why? Well that's quite simple to tell. We didn't have landline telephone let alone mobile phone. I didn't have a personal computer either and internet did not even exist. We had television, but didn't watch it too much.
So what did we do? We met in our free time and played outside. Played a lot all day long. Our parents did not see us except for lunch and dinner time. They didn't know where we were and we were never asked. We were free and happy. This amazing time went on for a good few years until the so called modern technology started to slowly evolve.
I experienced some significant changes in my late teenager period. Cable TV was a new and exciting thing. Being a Hungarian we only had Hungarian TV channels and we didn't learn English in school. My younger friends learned English, but for me the obligatory language was Russian to learn. There was no other choice.
Cable TV channels such as Sky channel, Super channel, Music Television or Sat1 were in English or German which I didn't understand at all, but it was still exciting to see something really different from what I was used to. Because of the lack of understanding English and German languages we were still outside playing a lot until a new amazing thing came to our life. It was a video player/recorder.
Oh yes big time. We were able to watch American movies with Hungarian subtitles or in Hungarian language. That changed everything. It attracted us so much. Not every family could afford to purchase one of those miracles, so we started to gather at one's flat like 7-8 of us and stared at the TV. Sometimes we watched 2 or 3 movies in a row. That means at least 3 hours of watching. That was something that we never did before. Did we enjoy it? Of course we did. It was super exciting.
A few years down the line the first computers and later the personal computers came out. One of my friends had a computer with lots of games on it. I don't have to mention that this was the next thing that kept us in the flat and tied us in front of the TV screens. This was still in the early days of modern technology, but do you see how our playing habit started to change. Instead of long hours playing outside, we rather stayed in and stared at the screen. When it was a rainy day our parents didn't mind, but they were rather concerned when it was nice and sunny.
From this moment the development of modern technology was unstoppable and it was real fast. We got to a point where we couldn't follow. Mobile phones, internet, video game consoles and so much more. Slowly, but surely we spent less and less time together and instead of the face to face communication, chat rooms and messengers came in place. We were so overwhelmed from what we had and sadly some of my friends started to "disappear".
Today's modern technology is a whole different level and it might worth to write a full article about it.
I love this article too, I often look back on when I was a kid growing up in the 80's makes me feel a little old though, things are not how they used to be, the good old days!