My son had a birthday party in the last few days. As the first one after house gatherings are permitted during the Covid times, we were all very excited about the same. Talking to him about a theme, I expected him to pick something from the movie or the children’s books or sporting teams. However, he was pretty determined that he’d like a PS4 game theme – Fortnite. As I started researching, I realised that a lot of merchandise as well as resources were available in this theme – of course I didn’t know what I didn’t know!
Got me thinking as to how the world (and our identities) has changed in the last few decades!
(It appears to be a very long time ago now), people used to ask each other’s home addresses as they met up to send a post card or a letter. And then came a time when landline numbers were exchanged. Landlines moved over, and arrived e-mail addresses (remember the times when all sorts of forwards were sent through the e-mails?)
And then mobile phone numbers. Further to this, you’d meet a person and send a social media friend request – be it Orkut (I struggled to remember the name of this first social media platform I joined – funny how short lived our memories are!), Facebook or Instagram or Twitter handles.
Last week, my tweenager son met with someone new of his age. Both our families chatted for some time, and just before we parted ways, I was surprised to hear something that the other boy asked my son – “Can I have your username for a certain game, so that we can connect online?”
Whoa. Life’s slowly moving on and identities are changing too. You are known by your game username, and you pick your birthday themes out of these too! Just like the world was quite unsure of everything new that came around, this is new for us too! Yet at the same time challenging for the children to avoid, as it is part of their social life.
With every passing day, life is becoming more and more of a balancing act!
Pic: Bunting that the kids created based on the theme.