Conscious Choice Seattle: ’Cause we are living in a digital world

July 2007 | From the Editor

’Cause we are living in a digital world

By Ritzy Ryciak

This month, CC turns our attention to the Millennial generation — the 33 million Americans between the ages of 15 and 25 who grew (and are still growing) up in a very different world than most of the rest of us.

Unlike the Millennials, I do remember a time when the world was not wired. I remember poking at my typewriter, and laboring with whiteout. I remember an age before cell phones, where I sat at home and waited — sweaty palms and all — for phone calls from the boys I liked. (Am I really admitting this?)

One of the most intriguing stand-outs of this month’s feature, “Meet the Millenials,” is that peers just five years my junior have dramatically different coming-of-age memories and present realities than I do.

Do ink and paper Encylopedia Britannicas even exist anymore? Does anyone else remember wishing for a set of their very own? I do. If you’re yet to celebrate your 25th birthday, can you remember a time when “google” was not a verb? At 30-years-old, I can. Those are swift and profound changes, in an absurdly short amount of time.

“Perhaps the most outstanding detail that distinguishes this generation — from even those born just a couple of years earlier,” writes Meet the Millenials author Tom Tressor, “is their level of media consumption, particularly online. Today, the average teenager spends more than 72 hours a week using electronic media — cell phones, Internet, television, music and video games — according to a 2006 study.”

I don’t have a MySpace account, but if I had gone to college just a couple of years later, I absolutely would. When the world changes this rapidly, it’s both exhilarating and scary. Like watching global warming exact its toll on the planet, there’s a sadness in know
ing that today’s wired generation will experience the world so
differently.

We address this issue head on in this month’s “Buzz Kill” feature, focusing on dwindling bee populations. The mysteriously disappearing bee colonies have definitely made headlines this summer. What would happen if we lose the bees? CC takes a different approach to the stinging subject by entering the busy world of urban beekeepers — who are more optimistic than the mainstream media may lead you to believe.

“I don’t think the bees are going to disappear,” one urban beekeeper told us. “The food system isn’t going to fail.” Instead, he hopes that more environmental awareness, along with growing interest in honeybees, continues to bring nature into urban areas.

His approach follows a common backyard theme that seems to be gaining in popularity. The solutions that we seek are usually closer than we think and sometimes as close as our own backyard.

See you at the farmers’ markets this summer!

Recommend this page to a friend

Top Ten pages recommended to friends: