Janine Santana

Confession of an Ok Boomer

Janine Santana December 3, 2019 Confession of an OK Boomer. Am I OK With This? Social Media is mind blowing. Look upon it from the point of view of a “baby boomer”. Within the lifetime of a typical middle-aged person today, let’s say my own boom boom boomer self, communication has evolved from engaging with carefully chosen pen pals via cursive, hand written letters on onion skin paper that traveled via airplanes, jeeps and by foot over days or weeks to electronic instant communication using “emojis”, “gifs” and short, partial phrases viewed from trendy applications on telephone devices held in the palm of my hand. What?! At the very least, I’m astounded at how lightning-fast we closely engage with total strangers around the planet. Gone are the pencils, paper, envelopes, stamps and time spent carefully rendering full letters. Our tools now are electronic light, digitally rendered symbols, videos and a few shortened sentences (think of the limits “Twitter”) bounced in real time off satellites and WiFi radio waves into the palms of our hands. I don’t always feel like enough soul goes into my electronic posts as went into my hand rendered, cursive letters. (Ok, Boomer). At most, I’m delighted to have instant playtime with my somewhat “adulting” friends.