The technology confessions of a middle-aged parent...

I’m guessing the picture above will be familiar to many of you reading this?  I’m guessing that if you have teenage children, you’ve also had the experience of them calling or messaging you from their bedrooms to ask what’s for dinner, or if you know where their sports kit is?  Whilst vinyl might be making a comeback, Facebook is being forsaken by the youth of today in favour of trendier and snappier social media.  I’m sure my concerns that these newer, “social butterfly” technology solutions are turbo-charging classic teen obsessions with body image and micro-talent celebrities are the same as every parent before me, but the volume level of this white noise of pointless mediocrity has been turned up to 11!

And the trend is set to continue:  IBM are predicting 40 Billion devices connected to the internet by 2020.  I’d go for a higher number.  Whatever, embracing the power of social media for business is no longer an interesting experiment, it’s must-have mainstream.  Our digital evolution continues...

As a middle-aged man (has it really come to this?) with teenage children, I’m starting to lose the digital plot. The technology arms race with my kids has left me waving the white flag of surrender as I realise that I’ve already lost the battle. The grim realisation that I’m no longer “keeping it real”, despite my avid adoption of latest / greatest social and domestic gadgetry hit me like a freight train a few months back when my 19 year-old son had to help me set up my new cycle computer. It wasn’t that I didn’t actually understand what to do, it was simply that my eyesight wasn’t good enough to read the instructions, printed in grey size 4 font, on a pale piece of paper around 2 Angstoms thick. However, having shrugged off my failing eyesight as a(nother) prompt to get my eyes tested (and successfully challenged my son to read various things from vast distances…), we saddled-up and were about to start our ride when my son pulled out his phone and started “texting”.

I began to moan about his “worse than drug-“ addiction to social media when he proffered his phone to demonstrate that he’d just launched “Strava”, a running/walking/cycling fitness app. “Don’t know why you wasted money on that cycle computer Dad – you should install this on your phone, it’s free and it’s really good. Plus you can follow all of your friends and see what they’re up to, where they went and how well they did. Also, you can get suggested routes, see how everyone’s done (in your geriatric age group) and check your own stats and performance over time.” So, for the record, I’m now a regular Strava-user, and would thoroughly recommend it. I also have a barely-used cycle computer on eBay.

Since then, I’ve begun to accept that I have well and truly handed down the “King of Technology” household crown to my offspring… My commonplace digital device frustrations are seldom solved by bouts of “techno-tourettes”, loudly telling the inanimate plastic object how useless it is, repeated violent screen-prodding, or vicious condemnations of the device manufacturer / designer… No, they are most often solved by enlisting the help of my eldest, middle or youngest teenage child. Amazingly, this help is not given with any empathy or sympathy for my anxiety levels, it’s provided as if I am the village idiot who deserves to be ridiculed mercilessly, and then publically reminded of his failings whenever the chance arises. Especially in front of teenage friends or middle-aged peers. The “fix” is usually something I have overlooked or dismissed already…whereupon the red mists of rage transform into the lame excuses of shame. My poorly-disguised revenge is to demand that we adhere to some simple, traditional family values during the rapidly diminishing times that we spend together: No phones, tablets or laptops during meals, no asking for the wi-fi code before exchanging meaningful greetings when we visit friends or relatives, and, my personal favourite, the “one screen at a time” rule if we’re watching TV in the lounge.

Unfortunately, I’ve fallen foul of that particular rule myself on more than one occasion, which results in unadulterated shrieks of delight followed by exaggerated flaunting of multi-screen activity by the children for days afterwards. The ultimate sanction of course is the confiscation of devices. This is tantamount to amputation, and may elicit claims of child abuse. Almost as effective is the threat of changing our wi-fi password, which seems like a very smart piece of domestic espionage, if only I could get my son to explain how to access our new router to change it! So, whilst I rationalise that I simply have a lower boredom threshold as I get older, I also have an odd suspicion that something more sinister is at work, and like our own parents and grandparents before, it’s something that defines the generations just as clearly as music and medical conditions! The unstoppable world domination of (anti-)social media, the ongoing digital evolution of the human race and the planet-sized amount of data produced daily, is slowly but surely fossilising me like a technology dinosaur.

But as someone who’s been involved in the high-tech industry for around 30 years, I’ve been the one of the technophile ambassadors driving the communications revolution and consequently the “digitization” of my children and, in time, their children.  However, I find myself unconsciously nodding in agreement with my friends as they critique the youth of the modern world… “kids just don’t communicate anymore…”, “they can’t actually write, never mind spell…”, and “when I was their age I came home from school and went outside to see my mates…”.



Through making a living in the world of electronics, I’ve been a huge advocate of new technology, and still find incredible inspiration and excitement in our industry. So when I dismay at the amount of time my family spend absorbed in the obsessive compulsive world of not going out to socialise, but being social 24x7 via the small screens that rule their lives, it stirs up conflicting emotions in me… I may have inadvertently caused the loss of my own Technology Crown and contributed to the digital demarcation of my middle age, but I’m proud to have had an involvement, however small, in shaping my children’s journey through the Internet of Things. And as I reflect on this, I realise that I’m more curious than ever and just a little bit jealous of what the digital future holds for them.