This Is How Our Generation Will Be Written About In Textbooks

We’ve all experienced history through textbooks, when we read about the times we haven’t lived through and are amazed at how life could be so different back then, than it is today. It’s your basic curriculum. It could date as far back as the Ancient Romans and cover various cultures throughout the world.

The textbooks all have that same look, usually a boring Times New Roman font with occasional illustrations to, of course, keep students’ attention (because we all know how effective that is). They always weigh at least 7 lbs making sure to give every prepubescent boy and girl a severe case of scoliosis.

Reading them is a bit like dating, we are either immediately interested or extremely bored, but sometimes we occasionally think to ourselves, “I wonder how our time, our generation and culture, in this moment, will be written about to the generations that follow.” What would be the title of that chapter?

“When Little Tiny Devices Called Cell Phones Became The Center Of Our World,” or “When People Became So Bored With Their Lives We Had To Invent A Thing Called Social Media To Keep Us Occupied.” Who knows maybe there will be a chapter called, “How The Kardashians Broke The Internet.” Let your imagination wander.

I can imagine the body of text reading something like, “When the internet was invented, the people of the world automatically believed they were right about everything, and were convinced that all of their opinions were facts.” I can imagine it would continue on to state something along the lines of, “One day an extremely intelligent college boy named Mark Zuckerberg started a phenomenon called Facebook. This was the moment that changed everything, when horny college kids decided to rate girls’ faces through a computer screen because they were too scared to talk to them in real life.” From there the revolution progresses to Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat (insert whichever social media channel you choose), and of course we can’t forget the phenomenon of online dating. When “swipe left” became a universally known phrase, and cupid no longer existed as god of desire, but as a free online dating forum. This is our digital evolution. The stereotypical images you see of primate evolving to man will be compared to cell phones evolving to robots.

With all jokes aside, the textbooks will cover wonderful social media platforms like Caitlyn Jenner, and will honor the positivity that social media has brought to our digital age. They will write about the pros and cons of instant communication, how we can chat with someone on a different hemisphere with just the tap of a finger, and how we can relate to individuals we may never actually have a chance to meet. All of these positive aspects will most certainly be mentioned and admired.

I’m sure these chapters have already been written or at least drafted by the textbook creators of our world, but it’s fun to think about how much life has changed in just the past decade, and how much more change we will continue to experience in the decades that follow.