21st Century Family

I think a lot of people that come to this site are wanting information about what the 21st Century family will look like so I wanted to do a series associated with that topic. I wanted to start with something that met the following criteria: it had to be specific to the 21st Century and needed to be something that profoundly affects every family unit, regardless of the myriad of variables associated with such a far reaching subject.

OK, I looked at a lot of different ways to begin this post and wanted just the right image. I looked at visual time lines of the major mass media and technology mile stones of the 20th century and it was amazing! It’s so hard for me to comprehend my grandmother in a “horse and buggy” era. When she was born there were really no cars, radios or airplanes. The invention of first mass produced car (Model T), motorized airplane, and the ability to utilize radio waves came around in the early part of the 20th century and began to change our world quickly. It was not long at all before radio was mainstream and television was starting to make it’s move. Once television settled in, things quickly moved from “Brady Bunch” to “MTV” and cellular “bag phones” started to show up in some cars. Pagers and cell phones took off like crazy and then the big one hit: the Internet! When the Internet was first made public it didn’t seem like such a big deal. I still remember people in college starting to use it to email and connect to others that lived in far reaching places. However, it was still pretty “nerdy” at the time and pretty much reserved for the “computer people.” Fast forward to our current situation and you have wireless broadband Internet piped through hi resolution screens on full blown “pocket” computers like the iPhone. The power and speed of both the Internet connection these devices have, as well as the computing power, didn’t exist when I was even in college (not that horribly long ago…early to mid 1990’s)….not to mention the fact that it “senses” position and movement and has an incredible “touch” interface. These are all things my kids and their kids will think are common place and just things “everyone” has.

The image I’ve included for this post is just what I was looking for because it shows the exponentially explosive growth of technology. The graphic illustrates the introduction of social technology and you can easily see that there really just wasn’t much going on until 2003 or 2004 when it just exploded. The list included in the graphic is by no means comprehensive, but it certainly makes a profound point: “social use of technology is exploding and becoming a mainstream part of the 21st Century family!” I will have to dive into what exactly that means in another post…

My hope is to create a series that provokes thought on both the good and bad associated with how technology and media in the 21st Century are affecting the modern family unit. By the end of the series I think we will see that media and technology today are having a profound impact on the family unit of the 21st Century in very historically different ways.

Encouragement: Do a technology “audit” for your family of today by listing all things you would consider both “technology and media” and the time spent exposed to these things. Follow this up by doing one for the family you grew up in and perhaps the family your parents or grandparents grew up in (depending upon how old you are). Really challenge yourself to dive a bit deeper than the first “layer” of the onion to take a hard look at both the good and bad you may or may not have seen before associated with these audits.