One recent morning, a Fox & Friends host exclaimed that "most kids these days have never used a phone with a cord". The comment's purpose implied a dig at the lack of worldliness that today's kids possess. The comment was unwise, unfair, and generationally challenged.
There are several ways to rebut what Mr Doocy insinuated. First, kids use the tools, equipment and electronics that are at their disposal today. It is the technology of the time. They can't easily operate a loom to make clothes. All generations do this. Mr Doocy did this. I wonder if he felt unworldly because he didn't have to churn butter, wash clothes on the riverside, use an outhouse, or upkeep his lawn with a scythe like those before him had to do. Moreover, only a few generations before, there were NO phones. So I guess, following Mr Doocy's logic, the only enlightened youth were those that were around during the wonderful and fabled "cord era".
Mr Doocy's comment was most likely a sweeping broadside like the ones that many of us make, with no harm intended. However, to be clear, kids today have a lot on the ball and will have skills and tools at their disposal that we "older kids" did not have. That's how progress works. We develop better tools. It's true that we always lose a little something as we move from one tool to the next, but in the larger picture we gain much more and are progressing.
No carping necessary because you had to get up and manually change channels and kids today find that alien. No, there is no inherent wisdom found in having used a phone with a cord. Wisdom is wisdom. Technology is technology. Don't conflate the two. Don't begrudge the youth because their world is different from ours. Ours was also different.
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