Social Change...where have all the children gone?

Technology has changed the way we live and work.

Our mobile devices are the first thing we see in the morning and usually the last thing we see at night.

We might even ask ourselves....are we a little bit addicted to them.

devices haves changed the way we socialise, the way we converse with our friends and famillies. We text more and we talk less, enjoying the anonymity of the screen and the pause and chance to choose our reply, with thought and consideration.

....but when we do talk we really do, we use video more and feel more comfortable having face to face video calls when connections allow to better keep touch. We’ve gone through a range of range of use cases and it’s gone from been the best innovation of our time to the biggest demon and back again.

While our Social lives have experienced challenges as we try to land on weather tecg is a good or bad impact on our society, technology has also massively opened up a global community, allowing us to meet and communicate with a billions of other likeminded people around the world, where we join communities and interest groups and ‘generally’ make positive and rewarding relationships with the choice to be openly exactly who we actually are, or enjoy the anonymity the World Wide Web affords us.

Its not just a generation thing, embraced by the millennials or Gen Z’s brough up with a mobile device in hand, in fact every single generation from babies learning to swipe a screen to my own ninety year old grandparents online banking from their iPads.

And why....

Well it just works doesn’t it. Apple didn’t invent the mobile phone but what they did bring was a device that worked and work well, intuitive, clear with a ground breaking design. We paid the premium for the experience, along with 1.5billion others and we now struggle to live without them.

it’s not just phones and online communities thats changed our social interactions, the online gaming revolution has changed how our children and millions of adults converse and interact on line. The gaming industry is now worth over £38billion, which is more than both the film and music industry combined. Games are now so advanced and realistic experiences that people can easily spend hours of not days immersed usually in an online environmen, as we see the major game machine manufacturers driving us to online on demand subscription services. Calling out concern from many parents asking ‘where have all the children gone’ as they struggling to pull then away from their screens amidst protest of just 5 more mins....please.

I write from experience as we poorly fought, but eventually won this battle ourselves with the thankful introduction of app controlled screen time and wifi device access and timer controls.

Innovation and progress will continue at a pace, the pace of change is growing at an exponential rate. In order to stay relevant we must keep abreast of progress. I can’t stress this point enough and urge you to consider this point carefully. Why do I stress this point? Well, if we look at the high earning roles in technology today, these are in roles and technologies that where not invented five or ten years ago, filled by bright young things or progressive individuals who have self taught or re-skilled to fulfil these roles. If we fast forward and consider a far faster rate of technology innovation moving forward, this trend will accelerate at a pace and result in a massive skills gap (it’s already felt in many areas of the technology industry)

Now I’m not suggesting we need to sign up to data science degree course, more that we just keep interested, keep aware for both ours and our children’s future and look to re-train as required using the mass of on line content (MOOC -massive open online courses)

Those with the skills, will win out and if we also consider the growth of the robot workforce,, observing the future, for our future has never been more important, Stay interested to stay relevant people ✊🏻

Oh and one price of advice on managing our digital lives and improving your social interactions...Take Tech Sabbaticals. what are they? I hear you ask!...

Simply leave your tech at home! be that for a weekend or as I do for two weeks every year, I leave my digital world behind, swapping my smartphone for a paper book (ok its a kindle) and my smartwatch for my trusty old analogue watch, popping my SIM card into an old Nokia for emergencies (7 day battery!!!) and fully switching off.

It’s the best thing I’ve done in years, give it a try