The topic of my column this week was going to be about today’s younger generation and the common view held by many people my age, or thereabout, that today’s younger generation is soft and spoiled.

I was born in 1961, which technically puts me at the tail end of the Baby Boomer generation. Those of us born between 1958 and 1964 came of age during the 1970s, which among other things brought us stadium rock, disco, punk rock and reggae music. Not bad for one decade.

There was no such thing as political correctness or ADHD – we called it kids being kids back then – and the only allergy we knew about was hay fever.

We also didn’t have home computers, or tablets or Smart phones. And there were no home video games unless you were lucky enough to own a home version of Pong which was first released in 1975. Galaga wasn’t released until 1981 and Pac-Man didn’t come out until the following year.

Most high school kids today have all that and then some.

When I went to high school in the late 70s I had several friends who either spent their summers picking tobacco in southern Ontario, or planting trees up north.

How many kids today would volunteer to give up their Smart phones for the summer to plant trees? I’m guessing not too many.

But maybe I’m being too harsh. After all, they inherited their addiction to technology from their parents, who inherited it from their parents.

In the 60s and 70s there was a popular saying, “Keeping up with the Joneses.” Basically, it described people who would buy the latest washing machine, television or stereo to keep up with their neighbours if they bought one first.

But it was limited to buying your first colour TV, or microwave oven, or dish-washer. Who knew it would signal the beginning of western society’s addiction to technology?

Within 30 years, our addiction had expand-ed to cell phones, video games, flat screen televisions and DVD players.

The big electronic companies like Sony, Samsung, Apple, Dell and LG started releasing new products every year hoping customers would want the latest model with all the newest bells and whistles. And we bought into their marketing scheme hook, line and sinker. It got to the point where people couldn’t wait to buy the latest model – whether they had the money to pay for it or not – so they bought it on credit which has become something else today’s society is addicted to. Why save your money to buy it later when you can put it on a payment plan and buy it now?

And it’s not just the Millennials and Gen Zs who were born between 1995 and 2005 – it’s everybody. Greed may have defined the 1980s, but consumerism and our addiction to buying the latest and greatest that has defined the decades since and still defines us as a society today.

My dad’s generation was the last of the pre-consumerism generations. They paid cash for everything they bought. They avoided having to pay on credit like the plague. And they used what they bought until it couldn’t be used anymore. I have a close friend of mine who follows the same policy, but folks like him are few and far between.

I remember years ago when my dad was contemplating buying his first computer. He ended up “contemplating” about it for three years. Every time he was about to pull the trigger and buy one, he would change his mind because he had just heard that the soon to be released new model would be better than the one he was thinking about buying.

After two years of this, my siblings and I finally convinced him to buy a computer. Over the years he would eventually replace the monitor and the keyboard, but he kept the computer until the day he died.

An even better example was his head-phones. He had a pair of old headphones with the foam that normally surrounds your ears worn off and the speaker part on both sides was covered with pieces of cheesecloth.

One Christmas, I bought him a pair of wireless, noise-canceling Sennheiser head-phones. For the life of me, he couldn’t figure out how to use the Bluetooth feature and he kept leaving them turned on so the battery was always dead. Within a week, he went back to his old pair.

I’m sure there’s a lesson to be learned here, but I still haven’t figured it out.

(If you wish to comment on this or any other View Point column please write to Fred Sherwin at fsherwin@orleansstar.ca)