The Ever Changing Teenage Tech Problem

Originally published on www.huffingtonpost.co.uk

I noticed something strange the other day; during two trips through my town centre, one on the way back from the train and other whilst returning from ASDA I noticed a group of teenagers hadn't moved from a particular spot on a bench. Now this may not seem like anything unusual apart from the fact that they had seemingly been sat there for over an hour, and also appeared not to have parted from their phones.

My partner then informed me that the particular bench they were sitting on was the best place to get free Wi-Fi in the area, as there are four open connections there. This got me thinking that at the age of 22 how much the telephone has changed in the last few years. When I was 15 the thought of being able to sit on a bench and access free Internet through my phone was pretty unfathomable, and for my partner, who is 29, the thought of doing so when he was 15 would have been even more preposterous.

As my brain began to fathom the thought some more, it made me realise that in the last thirty years the technology that allows everyone to communicate has changed vastly, and that the issues for teenagers communicating with each other whilst out and about has changed rapidly as well.

Long gone are the days that your parents talk about when you had to "knock on" to see if someone's in. In fact the though of knocking someone's door not knowing whether they are in or not seems positively medieval these days. But for those who were teenagers in the 90s, thus most likely being born around 1980, the troubles that they experienced when trying to find their friends not only differ from their parents, but also greatly differ from their own children or younger siblings.

For example my partner was born in 1983, therefore the troubles he had would have been similar to others born in the early 80s. His telephone communication issues surround the phone box, which seems positively Stone Age these days, I mean I've never used a phone box in my life and there's only seven years between us. He began telling me about the problems of finding a phone box, making sure you had money to use it and the anger you would feel when you saw someone enter a pound into the aforementioned phone box. The thought of using a phone box to me seems ancient, which fills me with dread about how people feel about my teenage communication methods.

My method of teenage communication however seems a little less pre-historic as mobile phones became the norm by the late 1990s. As I was born in 1990 I was using mobile phones throughout my teens and the main issue I had was my signal cutting out, which usually resulted in dancing around like a lunatic with my arms waving above my head, trying to make my phone grab any dreg of signal that happened to be floating about. When I was 15 we also had WAP, which is an ancient form of mobile Internet only seen now in museums, but everyone knew it was rubbish so didn't really bother with mobile Internet. Besides we had MySpace and MSN to communicate through at home, my how I feel old.

This then brings me to now, I have a younger sister who's only eight years old, yet she has a mobile phone that is more advanced than mine was at the age of 18. It makes me think that by the time she is 15 the major problem when it comes to her mobile phone will be not having a 3G signal in order to Facebook her friends, tweet a whimsical yet non-informative 150 characters via Twitter or to Instagram her lunch, with the thought of actually making a phone call just passing her by. However I think this may already be happening, but as I am now clearly over the tech hill at the age of 22, it doesn't really matter.

All this said I too feel like I've been catapulted back to the Stone Age when my 3G connection cuts out, as I'm sure many of you do. But if I've never used a phone box it makes me a little sad that teenagers these days are going to have much better phones, resulting in tech traumas that I've never heard of, which quite frankly makes me a little jealous for some unknown reason. However if 3G were to cut out completely I wonder how teenagers would communicate? After all without free WI-FI that group of teenagers I saw would have just been sat on a bench, not talking to each other. Oh the joy.

Britain: The bipolar nation

Originally posted on www.huffingtonpost.co.uk

If you haven't already noticed this week has seen a mass of snow descend upon the entire of the UK, and to say it has been met with a mass of mixed and somewhat strange responses would be an understatement.

Throughout the month of December during the build up to Christmas most people for some reason like the famous song says dream of a white Christmas only to be met with grave disappointment when once again all we get is heavy rain, wind and freezing cold temperatures. We then have to endure the disappointment that these people spread through social media about how gutted they are. Lets be honest we haven't actually had a white Christmas in quite some time as we all know here in the UK it won't actually come until January or February just like it has done in recent years, and given how bad it has been recently you wonder why people do get so excited.

Well as usual January has come along and the snow has come out in full force to put a stop to everything that we would usually do on a day to day basis, you have to wonder how people in countries such as Russia or Norway cope with the amount of snow they get throughout the year, I mean you never hear about those countries coming to a complete stand still do you?

Well I must say that I am probably one of the only people who dislikes snow and I've stuck to this for a long time, so much so that when it did fall last week I came close to avoiding my Facebook, Twitter and especially my Instagram account due to the number of tweets, status updates and pointless pictures of snow covered cars there were, as if people think I can't actually look out of my window and see it for myself.

So what does Britain do during this time, apart from updating their entire friend list about every snowy step they take? Well after the initial few hours of excitement as it falls where they throw face destroying lumps of ice at each other in the form of snowballs, build snowmen that never look like the ones in films as they have some type of road attached to them and enjoy the novelty that is snow, they soon turn from happy snow dancing hippies in a cynical moaning bipolar country that hates snow and never wants to see it again.

Yes we all know what happens, two days later when it begins to turn to suspiciously yellow and brown looking slush and ice the country panic buys every loaf of bread and pint of milk that's around because there's the possibility they may get snowed in. This for a start ruins everything for normal people as you can't have a cup of tea or a piece of toast as someone somewhere is sat with a panic room filled with bread and milk that will expire long before the snow has finally left our streets.

Now they're all sat there moaning that the snow won't leave, they can't get to work because it would probably be an 8 hour trek to get there, which in some cases means no pay and are anxiously praying to the Facebook and Twitter gods for it to go away. In other words they are finally realising why I hate snow in the first place and never wanted it to come.

It's not just snow that endures this but summer as well. You've probably seen some of these ex-snow lovers now praying for some warmth and sun, who are now saying they can't wait for summer. Well we all know what will happen in the summer, everyone will be excited about the sun but then moan about it two days later because it's too hot and the heat of their work office is getting too much for them. This is coming from a country where people will pay hundreds and hundreds of pounds to go to Spain for two weeks.

Lets just face it, no one in this country is ever happy, if we could save the economy from our ability to want something and then continue to moan about how much we hate it when we've got it we would never have entered a recession in the first place, in fact we'd probably be the most powerful country there is.

So for now we will just have to suck it up and deal with the snow and wait for it to go so we can be happy, that is until next year when everyone wets themselves with excitement at the first sight of a flake of snow. There's just no winning.