Generation Z
By: Gracey Hile
In the beginning, I was fascinated by technology. It was coursing through Earth's veins, entangling human beings into meaningless interactions hidden behind metal machines. Things became easier while also becoming too complex to comprehend. Everything was moving so fast, yet the world yearned for it to be faster; nothing was ever enough.
Then, I saw it in my living room one day. My brother, a pea-body child with a loud case of ADHD, was resting on the couch, the television blaring with his headphones, that were connected to another device, plugged into his ears. He had his iPad screen from about 4 inches from his face, gripping the case like it was life support. He wasn't with reality, yet I didn't think anything of it. I didn't even think twice.
He grew up tall, but I found that his mind had been molded by the games that babysat him late at night in the summer. He wasn't with reality, and it didn't settle with me well once I realized it. Being submerged in a sludge that is all digital codes wasn't healthy at all, but he was too young to ever know he was disconnected from the others. Or so I thought.
It was his Thanksgiving Banquet, and I decided I would attend it with my mom. I became anxious right as I put my foot into the cafeteria doors. It was loud, confusing-almost like an old man that had been shaken up, flipped around, and put back on its feet, expected to run- and they were awful. The children's faces became a blur and what I thought was abnormal disconnection, became the norm in his elementary school. He must have sparked up about twelve conversations that consisted of a virtual game. I lost myself, caught up in the sound waves, reaching for a way out. My only hope was at the surface, but I had long decided that I would drown before I swam to the land of being unable to focus on a speck of dust floating by.
The children were constantly doing things: Tapping and clapping, jumping and smacking, loud, loud, loud-always so loud. I couldn't stand it, but in a way, I could understand it. Technology had tainted most of the kids, but left a few untouched. I discovered that the children who were the most impatient with life were the ones who didn't have their parents at the Banquet with them. Perhaps some would assume,"Yes, yes. If the parents were present they would scold the boy. Then he wouldn't be running a muck." On the contrary, the parents probably don't scold them. Let me break it down.
It's hard to live in a white-majority suburb on the outskirts of an upcoming city, meaning parents are busting their asses trying to keep their rent paid so they can keep their boat on the boat dock and keep the lake by their toes. They're busy people, though, so they scrape up the money they should be using to go towards a comfortable retirement plan into their child. The kids glue their eyes to the screen, keep their mouths stitched shut, and it's like they aren't even there. When not accommodated by a screen, they get anxious and restless. In a way, it would seem the kids would be disconnected from other kids, but they all have one thing in common: Gaming.
My first theory was to believe my brother was out of touch from other people, but only because we're two, totally different generations. I used to play on a shitty Dsi that I had broken from angrily hitting the screen with the pen, but my brother plays on an XBOX One, where every single kind of entertainment is just at his fingertips. Take one of his favorite games, for example: Roblox. Roblox is a game that incorporates thousands of other games, all different and unique. My brother has an endless variety of those games, always staying in one for no longer than a couple of minutes. What surprised me was how many other kids were having the same experience.
Many of Timmy's friends are online friends with him through his gaming console, which I thought was quite strange. The only time, as a child, that I would play with someone I knew would only be if they were in the same room with me and we held the Dsi's together just trying to get them to connect. I also had a square box computer with only two games on it: Petz 4 and Babyz 4. They were made in the 90s, so the glitching and crashing were just a casualty I was used to when playing them. I recall a western cat-he was scrawny and a caramel brown, his fur matted and his eyes bulging out of his shrunken body- and when you slung him around, he'd screech. If I was lucky, he'd glitch in one place and spin around, shrieking until I tugged him down or reset the CPU.
When I tell my brother that he plays on games too much, he shrugs. When I tell him that it's unhealthy, my mom scolds me: "It's part of who he is." Then, Timmy choirs in,"Yeah, it's part of who I am, Gwace." To which I mutter,"It shouldn't be." He does get away from screens sometimes, but only sometimes. If we're in the car, for example, he stares off and gets quiet occasionally.
"What's wrong, buddy?" my mom asked him once. We were on our way back from Christmas lights about a year ago.
"Uh," he sighed, gazing out the window,"nothing."
"Well, something's wrong," she pushed,"Tell me."
"I'm bored." Bingo. Right back to games, tears started to form and he bit his lip to dramatize his sadness.
"Awww," my mom coddled him,"Baby. Don't cry." She held him as he gibbered something illiterate, but I knew it was about a game. Of course, as soon as we got home, he was upstairs happily jumping, a game controller in his grubby hands.
That's what really pisses me off and for a reason I don't know.
There is a large gap on innovations in technology between me and my brother, but it doesn't prevent him from being socially interactive. In fact, because he plays games so damn long, he is the most popular kid in his class. Woah, game-changer for my philosophy. The children aren't disconnected from each other. They're actually more connected to each other.
But, still, something is just strange about not seeing my brother yearn to play outside in the summer. Instead, he wants to sit in his darkened room to play with his friends online. Recently, we sat down at the table, and he has just been dying to have a computer. We handed him a laptop and I monitored him in case he had any questions about how to use it. It could not have been more than 10 minutes when he slammed it closed and said he didn't want to look at laptops for "Santa" to buy him for Christmas. This didn't sit well with me. He wanted to run upstairs to play his XBOX instead of looking at what he wanted for Christmas. You know it's pretty bad when your child asks for only 3 things because they already own everything they want. Spoiled, right? It may sound hypocritical, but I independently buy my clothes, decorations, and shoes on my own, which leaves me with nothing to want for Christmas either, but that's my valid reasoning.
I believe that I will never adapt to VR headsets and hover boards. It's just out of my generation. For my brother, I hope that the technology slows, so he can maintain the smallest shred of reality to look back fondly on. The future scares me, because someday my brother will be in the midst, and he won't be able to swim to the surface once he's drowning.
