If you're like most people, high school just doesn't feel like it was that long ago. (For better or worse!) Well, wanna feel old? Here's a list of consumer "experiences" that the kids graduating from high school this year have never had:
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- They've never had to pay for home Internet connectivity by the hour, like we used to with AOL.
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- Cell phones were never not a thing, and their first one was most likely a smartphone.
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- They've never known a world where you couldn't get a free cell phone when you signed up for a wireless service plan.
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- They've never been able to just let something dumb they did fade from memory, because it's all been uploaded to YouTube and Facebook.
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- Even though they've probably never used a Polaroid camera, they've still never had to wait to see if a photo came out OK; they've always had a digital camera.
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- Therefore, they've also never had to pay to print a bad photo, and the idea of forking over money to have an entire set of photos printed — sight-unseen — would probably be ridiculous to them.
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- Similarly, they've probably never seen a Fotomat.
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- Hanging out at the mall with friends was never about shopping, because they've always had the Internet for that. (Amazon was founded in 1994.)
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- Flat screen TVs were always an option, and kids today will never know the "joys" of moving a tube TV into or out of their dorm or first apartment.
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- With the availability of GPS, anxiety over getting lost has never been a part of their "driving experience."
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- Home computers have always been cheap and plentiful.
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- Computing was never something that's had to be done from one, static location (in the den), every time. Laptops have always been fairly common.
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- With iTunes debuting in 2001, when they were five, kids graduating today have never had to buy a whole album just to get the one song they wanted.
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- They've probably never burned a CD for a friend, because that friend could just pirate the entire album off the Internet. (Napster debuted in 1999, when they were three years old.)
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- With the rise of direct deposit / debit cards, they could probably make one box of checks last their entire lifetime.
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- More likely than not, CDs were never something for listening to music, but for burning information (but no one does that anymore, either).
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- They've always had access to free email. (Hotmail hit the scene in 1996.)
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- They've probably never used a printed encyclopedia to help them write a paper for school. (Wikipedia started crowd-sourcing knowledge in 2001.)
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- They've always known what to do with gifts they didn't like, because eBay was founded in 1995.
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- They've never been bored on long road trips. Nintendo's Gameboy came out way back in 1989, sparking the portable gaming revolution.
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- Calling a store employee a "genius" has never seemed weird to them, since Apple stores opened in 2001.
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What did we miss, reader? What do you think the biggest changes on technology and commerce have been? Let us know in the comments.
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