Life without mobile phones
THIS week my daughter went on a surf camp. Forty teenage girls went to the coast for five days. No parents, no boys and, more importantly, no mobile phones.
Imagine that.
No Instagram, no Snapchat, no TikTok, no YouTube. No calculator, no Google maps, no email, no internet, no Hot or Not app.
My daughter and her friends were looking forward to a week without phones. They were upbeat, knowing they would be forced to have real conversations rather than pass their time Snapchatting “I love you heaps BFF xxxx” to girls they met at a party three years earlier.
“It’s okay not to have phones, as long as no one’s got them,” she said. “In fact, it’s more fun.”
Welcome to the world of Gen Z, where they’re partying like it’s 1999.
They’re going back to the future in more ways than one.
Before my daughter left, she wanted me to buy her a waterproof disposable camera because Gen Zers know things don’t really happen unless they are captured on camera.
As someone who’s only ever taken a photo on a smart phone, she was stumped with her Fujifilm QuickSnap Superia 800 Marine 27 Exposure
Camera.
“How does it work? What do you need the film for? How do you know what you are taking photos of? How do you know if your photos look good? Why can you only take 27 photos?” she asked me.
“Well,” I told her. “You take one shot at a time and hope for the best. You only know what you’ve got a photo of when it’s been developed.”
She looked at me with the kind of pity teenagers reserve for their techchallenged parents.
“And how does it take selfies?” Sigh.
Disposable cameras were invented when I was about her age. Back then, they had names like “Fling 35”, “Funsaver” and “Imp”. Before the internet, we were forced to find fun where ever we could. Kids her age don’t use real cameras, even disposable ones. Instead, they use apps on their phones to make their photos look as if they were taken with disposable cameras.
The apps make their digital photos look old-school and grainy, with light streaks and an orange date stamp in the bottom corner from the year 1998.
On one app you have to take photos through a tiny pretend viewfinder and can only see the results of your photos at 9am the next morning.
Young people love these products because they’re “authentic”.
Thus far, Gen Z’s contribution to world culture includes using “verse” as a verb, texting with their thumbs and their love of “authentic” products that make new things look inauthentically authentic. Well, Gen Xers can’t talk. We gave the world Trump, Prozac, climate change and Married At First Sight love rats.
Watching my daughter marvel at the Jurassic-era technology that was cutting edge when I was her age in 1985 made me a little wistful.
Kids today will never understand the frustration of running out of film a week before the end of their holiday.
Or waiting two weeks to get their photos back only to find most of them were black and everyone’s heads were cut off in the rest.
But then things got even more weird. My daughter rang me from a pay phone on the Surf Coast. It was her first time using one. EVER.
“Mum it’s a pay phone, but it’s free. You don’t have to put any coins in it”, she said with great excitement.
“We found it just standing there on the main road. It’s amazing!”
The free calls are a post-bushfire measure from Telstra to help people stay in touch.
It was 1985 all over again, but better because her call wouldn’t have to end when she’d run out of 20c pieces.
These days there are no public phone prank calls, (“Can I speak to Ivor Butt please?”) no checking the chute for returned coins and no urine-soaked phone booths.
It doesn’t take much to challenge a teen these days.
Just take away their phone and ask them to find a way to take a photograph, make a phone call, amuse themselves for a few days and find their way home.
Who knows? They might even get into the hang of doing things IRL* for a change.
KIDS TODAY WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND THE FRUSTRATION OF RUNNING OUT OF FILM A WEEK BEFORE THE END OF THEIR HOLIDAY