When I was young, I remember playing out in my street a lot, and up at my Granny’s street a lot, with friends.  It would not matter the weather, as we would just congregate outside and return home only when it was time for a meal and/or a drink. 

Nowadays, life is very different.  I have an 8-year old son, and two nieces – one the same age as my son and one slightly older.  They are not allowed to roam outside.  Their exercise comes from supervised classes at school or after school clubs, while their after school social interaction comes from the computer – the younger of the two playing on ‘Moshi Monsters’ and other similar websites, while the older goes onto ‘Facebook’.

It makes me feel quite sad that society has come to this as I do not think that anything can beat being outside with friends and having that face-to-face contact.  I feel that many kids nowadays hide behind computer screens and, while Facebook is all well and good in some ways, it is not encouraging kids to be socially confident.  I am on Facebook and I recently got a request from a guy I was at school with.  I accepted him, and while he chats online, he does not speak if I see him in day-to-day life.  I recently met him in town and he said a quick hi before scurrying away again – he obviously was too uncomfortable to speak without the safety net of his computer.  This is a guy who is nearing 40, so what hope is there for kids nowadays?

Thinking about technology also got me to thinking about games, consoles, phones, etc. When I was young, not many people were lucky enough to own a computer – now you are deemed the odd one out if you do not have one.  Personal stereos used to be big chunky things with big earphones to match – now there is ipods and ipads, with very compact earpieces.  Mobile phones are the same – nobody knew what a mobile phone was when I was young – nowadays, just about everybody has one, even many kids are allowed to have one as parents often worry about the safety aspect of them being away from home, or often are allowed one just to keep up with friends.

I love writing letters, that is something that I have loved to do since I was young and I still love to do it.  However, I think that the art of writing letters is dying – many people are using email or social websites to communicate, and this is another way that you can feel the odd one out – if you do not have a computer you are often left in the dark about things as people often communicate by email only.

Which leads me to the question – while modern things are all well and good, but are they making the world too modern?  Are they making people socially inept and unable to live.  I use the computer for many things, but like many things that I own nowadays, such as my car and my mobile phone, I think I am depending too much on it.  I think that life was far better in the olden days without any mod cons.  We were free then.