I got 2 boys, Jonah is 3 and Justin is a little over 1. There will come a day when I’ll have to explain to them exactly what I do for a living, and somehow that explanation will have to make more sense than the one I give when an adult asks the same question. You know what I’m talking about on that one; they ask, you start to answer, you see that they’re eyes are glazing over and you lost them before the second sentence is done. Or you can just use the cop-out answer of “I do online marketing”.
Now here’s what’s concerning me lately; Jonah likes to get either on my computer or my wifes computer and play little Flash games over at playhousedisney.com. But what troubles me is when he does it on her computer. She boots it up, he turns on the monitor, chooses her profile, hits the Firefox button in the taskbar, hits the right bookmark on her bookmarks toolbar and proceeds to navigate the whole site using the mouse and keyboard. When he’s ready to jump off, he shuts down the browser, turns off the computer and monitor and off he goes.
He’s THREE years old. When I was that age, I couldn’t even tie my own shoes let alone operate a piece of machinery.
This is his toy laptop which he’s already bored with. He has since graduated onto either of the 2 desktops we have, or my work laptop. Currently we’re getting ready to repair an older AMD computer I built a couple years back since it’s faster than the desktop system I currently use. The plan after that is for me to give him the current desktop system I use and set him up with his own little desk.
Here’s how I feel about this
I know that kids will always exceed in areas that the rest of us feel we’re too old to really understand. But in this case, since my work is based through computers and the psychology of other end users, I can’t help but to feel that my fate is inevitable. My boys are going to run circles around me technologically within the next 10 years… maybe less.
7 year olds with cell phones and iPods. Grandkids setting up home networks for their grandparents. Children explaining to parents the difference between a Mac and a Window PC with technical clarity. My in-laws heard about Jonah being able to do this around Thanksgiving, and sure enough he got on and they all started coming back to our room and watched in awe of what was going on. They all said the same thing afterwards; “Wow that’s amazing. Boy I feel old.”.
My friends, we have created a monster. Our kids are gonna replace us with lightning quick insight into the bumbling technologies we struggle to live with everyday. If they follow in your footsteps for this career path, consider yourself warned; they’re probably gonna make money hand over fist from it. By the time they leave high school, they could have had over 5 years in web development and subsequently how to market their own sites. They’ll be emerged in target audiences for 3-4 decades of their career because they’ll grow up with them, go to college with them, work with them, and retire with them.
He better get me into a good retirement home with all that money he’s gonna make….
