The "Now" Generation

Whilst watching the Star Wars trilogy on video (yes I do mean tape!) with my children this week it made me realise how things have changed since I was their age. They found it hard to wait for the videos to rewind when the movie had finished and not being able to skip to the menu and miss out all the adverts! Did those of us born in the 20th century have to learn more patience than those born in the 21st century?


Here are a few ways that things have changed in my lifetime growing up in the 1970s and 80s:


Television:


Not only was TV quite often still in black and white but children's TV was restricted as to when it was on. I remember that we had our after school slot on the BBC but then "grown up" TV came on with documentaries, quizzes etc. Yes at the weekend we had a full morning of programmes such as Tiswas and the Saturday Swap Shop, but the majority of output on the 3 channels was aimed at the adults. Even adult television was cut off at the end of the evening with the National Anthem heralding the end of the broadcast.


These days children have their own dedicated channels some of which even run 24 hours a day. They can watch their favourite programmes at anytime due to both On Demand services and services such as Sky Plus and BT Vision recordings. They can even use the Internet to download them onto the computer or games console.