I’m an extremely nostalgic person, but I think that might actually be partly a symptom of being a millennial. Hear me out on this one. Yes, the internet was actually developed in the early 1970s, but it wasn’t widely available in homes until the 1990s. We were the first generation to grow up with the internet, and the last generation to grow up without it.
I remember rushing home from school to conference call with two or three other kids from my class, but I also remember meticulously setting up my AIM away message and bio, my Xanga, then my MySpace. I was coding at 14 and didn’t even really realize it. To be honest, I should have probably started blogging way sooner because I had a head start with those early days of mostly venting, bad poetry, and reviewing song lyrics.
Love for 90’s T-Shirt
Offline, the world tasted like blue PowerAde and smelled like cherry almond L’Oreal Kids shampoo (sadly discontinued, but the second best scent is still around). It felt like hives after rolling down the hill in my parents’ backyard and it sounded like “Soda Pop” by Britney Spears. When I think about the things that scared or upset me back then, Spanish quizzes and Stevie Lingwood teasing me comes to mind. My parents could drop us off at the pool in the morning and even if they weren’t there, they knew we’d be safe with the lifeguards, other parents, or someone else’s babysitter.
When we wanted to capture a memory, we used those little mini polaroid cameras, disposable cameras, and later little pastel digital cameras. Facebook wasn’t a thing until I hit my senior year of high school, Instagram came after college. My memories are cut up little snapshots in homemade albums, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I love my blog (and twitter) and I’ve made so many friends from the online world, but as amazing as communication has become, I also think it’s broken down. Our attention spans are suffering as are our relationships. I’ll never forget in my senior seminar class in college, we went around the room predicting how our future children would interact with technology. Unanimously, we all said we wanted to keep our kids from having too much of an online presence and that we thought, HOPED, the pendulum would swing back to how are childhoods were. More unplugged, more hands on.
Kendall and I have spoken about it. He’s a gamer and would like that to be something that he and our future kids like to do together, when age appropriate. I grew up with educational computer games that did help with my development, so I’m with him on that. But we agree that they don’t need smartphones (if we’re able to prevent that by then, who knows) and they don’t need social media until they’re old enough to follow guidelines and handle it responsibly.
I guess I just want my kids to have what I had- a childhood where they’re encouraged to explore and learn IRL, to play outside in the sunshine or under the stars, get a little dirty. And when they’re done, hopefully I’ll be able to track down a bottle of that cherry almond shampoo.
Check out what I'm loving right now on Amazon!
