Buttons are in fashion. The global trend towards simple mobile phones took root in Russia almost instantly. It is interesting that the fashion was started not by instadivs filled with limousines, caviar, diamonds and other “Dubai”, but by ordinary American youth. It’s no longer embarrassing to appear in a company with your grandmother’s phone in Russia, it’s pretty cool. Sales statistics for MTS and Ozon showed that the main buyers are now teenagers aged 14 to 20. In the first two weeks of March, sales increased by 12%. According to Ozon, sales in March increased by 68 percent compared to the same period last year. Covers and sliders are bought by girls as usual, simple phones with brutal design attract guys.
Fashion can be different: what teenagers have not worn for the past 30 years: hoodies, tights, plaid jeans, tights, mini, maxi … It is enough to remember raspberry jackets combined with gold chains. But it was all an imposed and unconscious fashion. It’s unlikely, then, that someone would understand why, for example, in 2005 girls wore tight jeans and in 2006 they changed to “Afghan”…
Today’s feature phone trend is a conscious choice for a digital detox.
Young people are tired of the internet and take shelter in the real world. The generation of zoomers, born between 2000-2012, grew up in the colorful world of labels. They are almost unaffected by advertisements and bright designs. The only thing that attracts them is comfort and convenience. They just need a phone to make themselves felt at work and not be distracted by messages and news every half minute.
From infancy, zoomers have grown up under the constant pressure of information. Funny and half-crazy cartoon characters with silly voices and songs were replaced by a radio station where their parents listened to audiobooks and well-performed classical music. It was mixed, of course, with other Soviet and post-Soviet radio slags. But the positive aftertaste remained, and the 30-45-year-olds formed an understanding of how different real music was from the “telemics” of the 1990s-2000s. Today’s youth are trying to find something really valuable and important in terabytes of information.
About ten years ago, when I agreed to take care of young children, I realized that their favorite children’s TV channel did not air a single cartoon in the three-hour broadcast, in which the characters exchanged at least a few sentences with each other. Painted children, adults, animals, hominids, and the rest of the “woolskra” made a wide variety of sounds, but during this time they did not say a single word. Cartoon families were communicating with each other like monkeys in an aviary. By then, teachers were tired of complaining and psychologists were tired of sounding the alarm. Fortunately everything went well. Children did not grow up to be “donut men” and chip-eaters; They grew up as smart, sociable and very practical young people.
Hundreds of studies have been done in recent years showing that the main problem with zoomers around the world is a lack of critical thinking.
Any charlatan can take over their minds in a matter of minutes. Since childhood, they are accustomed to checking their information and searching for new ones in search engines, so they believe without hesitation in everything that the Internet offers them. However, this problem can also be solved. In any case, they themselves think so: Caution, and most importantly, the division of the world into “profitable / unprofitable” should guard against trouble. Maybe it will be.
Teachers of many universities say that “zetas” learn new information very easily, are actually smarter than their elders, and are not blinded by stereotypes. However, despite the emotional attachment, they are practical enough to reject their friends or pets. Because they don’t fit the “I’m comfortable” criterion. They do not hesitate to account for every penny, and they learned to save in ways that even our grandfathers, who survived the famine, could not even imagine. But most interestingly, as the studies of sociologists in the USA, Europe, Japan and Russia show, until recently, almost all zoomers perceived life as something accompanying against the background of the fictional world they saw on their smartphones. This was until I realized that real life is much more comfortable and interesting than the endless carnival on social networks. It is so comfortable that even the most interesting content cannot replace it. Of course, they will continue to easily master new technologies, discover new generation devices and use smartphones. But just for convenience. For example, connect ridesharing and communicate with instant messengers to arrange delivery. Not more.
The keypad phone fashion and digital detox did not emerge alone. Young people massively buy Soviet Zhiguli. The ridiculous, square, small and unstable Soviet “penny”, “seven” and other models were of interest to naive designs by today’s standards. The “aggressive”, “space”, “chic” car monsters stuffed with electronics are repulsive. “Not friendly,” the ringer explains. Although they did not forget to install modern French and German engines on their Zhiguli, they tuned and repainted the products of the Soviet automobile industry.
For some reason we are used to comparing ourselves to foreigners, “forgetting” that in the 1990s young people were not so different from their peers in the US and Europe. The present are pretty much the same all over the world, they have pretty much the same idea of the world and of themselves. Therefore, it is best to leave all talk about hypertrophic spirituality and a special path in favor of the poor. Children, whom we fear will turn into soulless consumers, reject the imposed lifestyle by following a kind of inner instinct and try to find the path to that very spirituality. That is, to do what most of their parents lacked the will, integrity, and courage to do. And this happens in all countries.
Of course, popular culture and the Internet turned out to be the meat grinder that was supposed to grind people into a homogeneous mass. Fortunately, this idea was not entirely successful. And the Addams Family characters of the 1980s were right when they said that the human soul cannot be killed even with a chainsaw.
The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the editors’ position.