Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 14:42:33 on Fri, 19
Jul 2019, MissRiaElaine remarked:

I've seen teenagers on the bus communicating with each other by
FarceBuke or whatever when they could just as easily turn their heads
and open their mouths.

Not a new thing. In the office where I was working in 2001, people would
email someone sat beside them, to ask when they wanted to go out to
lunch.

It was less intrusive than interrupting their train of thought with a
verbal question.

There are probably quite a few people in their late 50’s who look with
askance at young people communicating in the various ways now possible ,
and forget that they sat within an old car chatting with their friends
also sat in various older cars parked a few yards away in the same car park
using a technically illegal CB
radio because they could and it was a little bit naughty.


I’m of the generation where the phone was kept for really important calls
like Dads business and speaking to relatives that involved making a Trunk
call only happened a few times a year, growing up on an isolated farm
meant that at Weekends and School holidays regular contact with school
chums was confined to a couple of mates who were in convenient cycling
distance at roughly a four mile round trip.
Youngsters today with communication freedom can stay in contact with a far
wider social circle if they wish which on the whole probably isn’t a bad
thing though it does of course mean they can reach or be reached by
more undesirables.
And as for communicating by opening their mouths, well how long will it
take too describe a photograph or video accurately, easier to just send it.
The Railways ,Trams and the Bicycle were amongst the first step changes to
allowing a greater number of people to interact outside their immediate
community, then cars but youngsters cannot not get their hands on those
till they are almost adults and even then running one can be too expensive.
Keeping in constant touch using their phone may look annoying to some of
us older people but is probably a lot safer than going to and especially
from the pub to meet friends and then drinking far too much which was
regarded as fairly normal in my teens .
The present generation of young do far less of that than we did.
My Sister said of her two millennial children ,if they had been around
when I was their age we would have considered them a bit boring.

GH