Yesterday, I welcomed my second nephew into the world. While my sister didn’t start flooding her social media feed with pictures of the kid, she did share some photos with us on WhatsApp. She did the same thing when she had her first child. Trust me when I say she’s not the only one who does this. I’m at the age where people around my age are having kids of their own and it’s something I would have been oblivious to if it wasn’t for my Facebook feed filling up with pictures of babies.
I’m not complaining and it’s not a bad thing. I have no qualms with what kind of photos people want to post up. If I don’t like it, I just ignore it or block it, no biggie. It’s just interesting to know that in today’s day and age, kids are digitally imprinted the day they are born.
Back when I was a kid, there were no digital cameras, and film was the norm. Since film wasn’t cheap to buy/develop/print, parents didn’t simply take photographs of me lying in my diapers. Not to mention, their bulky cameras weren’t by their side every hour of the day (unlike our smartphones). They brought out the camera for family vacations and occasions like birthdays. There was no video of me saying my first words or eating my first spoon of solid food.
Now, you can have photographs and videos of kids making faces, taking their first step, taking their first dump and so on. I wonder what it would be like 20 years in the future when Facebook/Instagram has been replaced by something else. Our smartphones probably antiquated thanks to camera eye-implants or glasses. We’ll probably have footage of every waking moment for a kid’s first eighteen years of his life. It’s going to be glorious.
Thanks to technology, nothing will go undocumented anymore.
This piece was inspired by Jimmy Kimmel’s ‘I Told My Kids I Ate All Their Halloween Candy 2015’ special. In the introduction, he said something very funny and interesting – he never runs out of submissions every year and he will continue to do the special as long as people continue to have sex.
For those of you who haven’t seen it, it’s linked above. Anyway, it’s basically a collection of clips of parents filming their kids’ reactions when they tell them that they’ve eaten all of their candy. It’s funny, it’s endearing, and a bit cruel – but it’s all in good fun (at least I hope so. Too much candy is bad for you anyway).