"Kids these days, you have your eyes glued to your cell phones, always online! See, when I was your age ..."
Ever heard similar remarks from an older person in your life? Your parents, uncles, aunts, grandparents... They all seem to agree that technology is what makes our generation, Gen Z, drastically different from theirs. And they're right. As of now, both generations are living with technology---the only difference is that us Gen Z's have lived with technology all along.
Which begs an interesting question---what was life like before all these tech we take for granted? Specifically, what was college like? Most of Gen Z right now are in the young adult stage of life---a majority of which being college students. Have you ever considered what it must have been like to create a paper without Google Scholar? Or to go to class without the class coordinator reminding everyone to read Chapter 8B on the WhatsApp group? What should one do when they want to fill out their course plan, without a set academic system website?
I asked my mother, who went to college in the 90s, about her college life; in a moderately structured, 20-minute interview session. Here's what she had to say.
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"What was communication with friends in college like, before the Internet became mainstream?"
It seems college students will always find a way to gossip and spend time with each other outside of class. According to my mother, she and her friends used to contact each other by landline---they know all their friends' numbers by heart. Landlines and letters were the two most popular options of communication.
Interestingly, there is a cultural difference in going out with friends---bailing is a lot more unacceptable, due to the inability to let your friend know in an instant that you're bailing. So, back then, once you scheduled to see your friends, you had to see them.
"And when we hang out, we're a lot more present," she said. "None of us are on our phones, or anything. But this lack of cell phones brings another problem... when we're waiting, at, say, the doctor's office, there's nothing for us to play with. We would just space out."
Then she told me quite a bit about flirting in the olden days. "We used to slip in notes to our crush's lockers," she said, "and when we lent them books, we would write love letters between the pages." It's adorable to think that humans of all eras will always manage to seek love.