Dwain Northey (Gen X)

It is December 2023 and I have been reminiscing about my youth namely the 1980’s, those were the years that I was in Middle School, High School, College, and the Military, pretty formative years. I have also been listening to a lot of 80’s music and rewatching movies from those years… we have come a long way, but have we gotten better?

The 1980’s were pre-internet, which meant that term papers required library time and handwriting those papers, no google or cut and past back then. It also was a time that as children and teenagers we had to go outside, we were not tethered to a game system or cell phone 24/7. In those ways I feel that my childhood was better than my son’s, but he has had many advantages that I did not have at his age.

On the world stage there was still the threat of nuclear annihilation because the Cold War was still going on. My Dad was in the military so that ominous reality was never too far from the surface although as teenagers we tended not to dwell on it other than when movies like War Games broached the topic. It was an era of looking at a possible dystopian future with movies like Mad Max and Red Dawn but there were also movies that completely defined Generation X, The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

Arcade video games came out; Pac Man, Centipede, Donkey Kong and the like but we actually had to go to an arcade and interact with our peers we could sequester ourselves in our rooms and play video games like the current generation.  

This current generation has been subjected to a 24-hour news cycle and 100’s of channels of around the clock entertainment, we had 3 to 4 channels unless our parents decided to buy cable and those few stations went off the air at midnight. If you were lucky enough to have cable, we got to see the launch of MTV when they actually played music videos…do they even play music videos anymore?

Life without cellphones was nice, not having to be in continuous contact let our minds dwell on other things, work could not contact you in an instant wanting us to come in. I miss the days of trepidation answering the phone because you didn’t know who was on the other end, those were the childish days of prank phone calls, something today’s kids will never understand.

We were afraid the George Orwells 1984 would become a reality little did we know that in 2023 it has come pretty damn close. I don’t even know that todays school kids have to read those books, 1984, Animal Farm, Lord of the Flies, The Great Gatsby.

The one thing that I wish my son had in school that I had was never having to go to school and worry that someone might come into the school with a gun and start killing indiscriminately. I wished for that every day for every kid and now that my son is in college, I am even more troubled by that thought.

40 years has past since those days, technology has made great advances but socially the sense of community has regressed… that’s what I miss about the 1980’s.