Digital Generation?

We are in the digital age. The Internet has transformed every aspect of our lives, from entertainment to education, shopping to holiday planning - where there's a will, there's an app.

So, our kids are the Digital Generation?

What's the opposite? Maybe Consumer? Absorbers?

How corny and strange that word is. Generation.

But what I'm trying to say is that most of us are not into Generation. We are Consumers. We stare at the screens, we read the words (if only to forget them the very next second), we play the games, watch videos. Often, we do not appreciate the hours of effort that might go into the forming of a single well-crafted sentence, not to mention a minute of screen-action.

People are always happy when their paint. Even in black and white.

 Creators, on the other hand, a tiny fraction of the population, churn out content based on ideas that float around in their subconscious, in other people's minds, grabbing them while they aren’t looking, are sleeping, dreaming, defying gravity - converting them into images, text, interactions for the world to appreciate, abuse and forget.

Well, that’s not really true – people are taking and posting photos at record-breaking rates. Never before in human history has so many Instagram images been generated. Everyone is a photographer, we can all be artists. However, given the ease, I think that rarely counts as creative content-generation – unless of course it comes with some profound insights that have been keenly laid out and articulated.

When a child sits in a high chair with a plate of food in front of him and a screen for distraction, he becomes the ultimate senseless absorber - colours, bits and bytes, frequencies and wavelengths just blasting through the pupils into a network of spongy latent grey matter, exploding into an internal confusion of meaningless ecstasy and stimulation. Isn't it interesting that only in (over) developed economies such as ours do we need to distract children for them to eat? There are no such problems in third world impoverished countries - a distracted child will end up with no food. Focus on the meal, or someone else will eat it for you!

So turn the tables around and free your mind to create. Encourage the young to think, write, draw, paint, instead of staring into an abyss of nonsense which floods their minds with hollow content meant for the weak. Grab back the reigns of imagination and connect again with your inner-voice which is the source of generation.