As one of the young’uns at Leader World Headquarters, I sometimes find myself having to defend the mental acuity of my generation. I’m asked accusatory questions like:
■ “Were you even taught how to write in cursive in grade school?”
■ “When was the last time you actually sent a piece of mail?”
■ “Do you remember when such and such celebrity died?” Considering I wasn’t alive when such and such celebrity died, I would say no, not really.
I’m here, as the Leader’s Gen Z spokeswoman, to say that while much has changed and is changing across generations, so much is staying the same. Yes, I pay my bills through my banking app and read e-books using my library app and learn French with my language app and order a ride on my car service app, but I take some steps to stay tethered to physical reality.
Getting sucked into the online world is so easy, but keeping connected to the real world can be difficult.
I’ve never lived in a world where I didn’t have access to the internet at the palm of my hand or at the click of a mouse, and yes that probably has altered the state of my brain.
The same can be said for every generation, though. Look at how the Great Depression changed the spending habits of the Greatest Generation or how the assassination of John F. Kennedy rocked the Baby Boomers.
The technological revolution, with the proliferation of Smartphones and the rise of artificial intelligence, has certainly defined my generation, but it’s also made us more cognizant of gaps or downfalls in these inventions.
Yes, most social media is free, convenient to use and can be a great way to connect with friends, but it can also be manipulated or taken away from us at the drop of a hat. Saving photos, videos and other snippets of our lives on social media is not a viable solution.
I don’t want to live my life behind a screen, and I don’t want my memories lost because the next owner of Facebook accidentally hits the delete button. Therefore, I’m taking steps to disconnect from my phone. I make physical copies of all my photos. I write in a journal. I work for a print newspaper.
While older folks may use the post office for practical reasons, like paying the electric bill or renewing their subscription to Time magazine, I use it for my all-time favorite hobby: Postcrossing.
In the world of Postcrossing, anyone from anywhere can be your friend. Once you sign up online (yes, you can’t entirely escape the internet nowadays), a random address from another postcrosser is generated and you are connected with him or her.
I send about a dozen postcards a month to people all over the world – as far away as Australia and as small as the Aland Islands – and they send some back. I love the simplicity of sitting down at my desk, matching the best postcard with the recipient, writing a brief message and putting it in my mailbox.
It’s a connection that takes time – some of my postcards don’t reach their address for 50 days or more.
My dad told me of a time growing up when his family’s clunky television received only one station – Channel 12. If you wanted to watch TV in the evening, it had to be either Walter Cronkite with the “CBS Evening News,” “The Waltons” or “The Dukes of Hazzard.” Nearly everyone across the country was watching the same thing that evening, and at work the next day they would all talk about it around the water cooler.
That sort of simplicity is hard to imagine for a Gen Z person. When opening X (formerly Twitter), we’re deluged with a firehose of content from every corner of the internet. For me, Postcrossing is a way to connect with others and dial down that firehose of information to a trickle.
In most areas of my life, I’m spoiled by instant gratification: If I order a pair of shoes, a box will be on my doorstep tomorrow morning. If I text my friends, they’ll respond in a few minutes.
With Postcrossing, I must show patience and dedication. The more postcards I send, the more I’ll receive.
My addiction to Postcrossing isn’t necessarily a reflection of a huge trend among people my age, but I’ve noticed other ways that Gen Z people put down their phones and connect with reality.
Any time I stepped into my friend’s college apartment, she had me take a selfie with a Polaroid camera. After the picture developed, it was stuck on the fridge so that it could be reminisced upon for years to come. The same routine was performed for all my friend’s visitors. Those pictures cannot be easily lost to the whims of a Facebook crash or a misplaced phone.
Polaroids and postcards are something real, something permanent we can hold in our hands, in our world that is made fleeting and ever-changing by the internet.
How my generation interacts with the world may be different than other generations. It’s not necessarily a bad thing – we’re trying to navigate change just like everyone else. Trust me when I say that Gen Z wants to be happy, develop meaningful human connections and experience life to the fullest, just like everyone else. Some of us are even managing to do it without learning cursive or recognizing who that old celebrity is.
A popular Gen Z phrase is to tell someone to go touch grass. It’s used when someone has scrolled on social media for too long. Go touch grass is a perfect comeback for someone who spends too much of their lives online and needs to experience life.
Sometimes it feels as if the overwhelming amount of information on the internet is going to make the planet spontaneously catch fire at any moment, so please, whatever generation you belong to, go touch some grass today.