I had one of those defining moments in life a few days ago - a slip up on me, smack me in the face reminder that I'm not getting any younger, and the actual youth are taking over. My iPhone (yes, I know, uncharacteristically trendy of me, but it's For Work) was not functioning properly, forcing me to enter The Hallowed Place, also known as the local Apple store for any neophytes who haven't had the experience. (Note I did not say pleasure. It is rarely a pleasure to enter the doors beneath the gleaming silver apple in the sky. Mostly, it's expensive, but I digress.)
Anyway, as I sidled into the orifice of the beast, I was greeted by a variety of young people who handed me forward like we were doing the Grand right and left down the center aisle in their little dance. Ultimately, I ended up with a young man who was probably born after the shoes I was wearing came off the assembly line. I am not sure he was even out of nursery school, although the wedding ring on his finger made me suspicious that he was less young than I am old.
I am not saying he wasn't knowledgeable. His head was packed with information I neither needed nor wanted, since my only goal was to get the phone working again and get the heck out of Dodge while spending as little as possible.
But he was young. And it showed. Oh, how it showed.
He was filled with the disdain of youth for their elders. He assumed I knew nothing about the technology involved, and thus needed him to explain the complex workings of the cellular device that I was not able to use (it didn't seem to occur to him that the prized possession may actually not be functioning properly.) He worried that I would lose Important Stuff (because my entire life revolves around my phone, naturally,) and explained in elementary terms (read - like talking to a four year old) how to sync the phone to the computer, as if I hadn't been doing that since before he was a dot on an ultrasound.
His arrogance was matched only by his determination that this older person would walk away an Apple believer. He ran diagnostics. He patiently explained how to turn the phone on and off. He connected my phone to a cord, and after about five minutes of reassuring me that everything, but everything would be gone, but it was The Only Way to cellular nirvana, he wiped out the phone and we started from scratch.
He insisted I needed help setting up the phone, sighed when I said I didn't need the location services (I went back in later and changed the settings, but seriously, I had a job to get cracking on, and didn't have time to play around) and informed me that they HIGHLY recommend setting up an iCloud account, and I would somehow be a lesser mortal if I failed in my mission to be connected to the great Core in the Silicon Valley. I passed. He sighed louder.
It was then that a revelation made it's way into my brain. We come from different worlds, the under 35's and the overs. We have different goals in using our technology. We have different expectations of what our phone should be able to do for us (or to us.) We have different needs for our telephonic adventure. And there is no common ground.
Old people want the phone to be a tool, to work for them when they need it. People my age do not want to be enslaved to electronic media 24/7, and we resist the invasion of our privacy and our time by the shrill call of the cell.
Young people seem to have a different relationship with their technology. They want it in their hand, they want to be connected at all times, they interact via media more than they do in person, and they don't have the same desire for privacy that we oldsters grasp for. For the younger crowd, the media is an end all on it's own, while for people my age, it's simply the means to get somewhere else.
I think I now understand why Mark Zuckerberg is constantly surprised by the furor created with his massive changes each time they bring out a new iteration of Facebook. He is catering to the under 35 crowd, and his focus groups consist primarily of his target audience.
I have a suggestion for him, one which would probably garner him billions more in advertising dollars, and enhance the experience for all of us. Allow choice in which format you want for your FB page. Bring back the original experience, and call it Facebook Legacy - a simplified, dumbed down version that allows people to do what Facebook originally intended - connect with people you already know, and with whom you already have something in common.
For the younger set, bring on Facebook Future, with all the bells and whistles, apps and games. If they don't care about privacy, they can set their page to accept any new feature as it becomes available. They will be on the cutting edge, leaving their parents safely back behind the fence.
It's an idea we could all embrace.
I think the youth who helped me at the Great Silver Apple in the Sky was left as depressed by the experience as I was. As I exited the store, he shook his head behind me. His thought was clear. I am a land line person in a digital world. He may be right. Have you seen my rotary phone anywhere?!
