Generational Mindsets

Published on 
2 min, 245 words

Categories: life

In a recent article/tweet the author commented on how all the photos taken by their child looked awful. However they realized this was down to a different generational mindset.

This was highlighted when I was walking behind two teenagers recently and they just took random arbitrary pictures of themselves as they were walking.

They view photos as disposable. There is basically no overhead to taking hundreds of images - it is just point at something (ideally including themselves) and click the button as many times as they like. They also have huge numbers of filters that can then be applied to tweak it in various ways.

Those of us brought up in the age where photos were taken on film have a different mindset. When we took photos there was a cost involved - it cost money to develop the photos and also there were limited photos available to take on each film. We had to spend time thinking about the photo we were about to take before pressing the button.

It appears that this mindset has continued for a lot of people into the modern digital era. Despite the low overhead, we still take the time to compose the shot before taking it. Personally I am okay with this as I would prefer one decent photo rather than hundreds of random photos but it highlights a difference in generational mindset.

What other generational mindsets do we have?

(Unfortunately I can't find the original source)