Internet Kills Experience of Retail For Today's Youth

Tower Records...photo credit on bottom

 

As technology advances, businesses fade away and the electronics that occupy teenagers changes constantly. When you reach adulthood and raise your own children, they grow up with electronic gadgets that make the devices of your generation look like they belong in "The Flintstones".

Now this may sound like only a problem for the older generations, but I disagree. One might say that the older generations get gypped because they didn't get to grow up with the technologies that the millennials are growing up with now. Many of these advancements make life easier, which older generations didn't get to utilize while they grew up. Especially when it came to entertainment media.

 The way I see it though, it's the youth of today that have been robbed. In a world of instant gratification, the current generation of kids have been robbed of experiences that we, the people of older generation, look back on fondly.

Today's youth can download a song, movie, or book instantly on various devices thanks to the internet, but for those of us who grew up in past decades, sometimes the search made obtaining the prize much more gratifying.

With the invention of software programs like iTunes, record stores began to fall, one by one. The experience of sifting through bins of records and cassettes (yes, not CD's) and finding the gem that you didn't even know existed, made the whole experience feel like it was worth it. Youth of older years would spend hours at record stores, share their music tastes with fellow kids, and often grow up with much more appreciation and ownership of the music artists they enjoyed.

Today, kids have been robbed of this experience. They can sit behind a computer or even a cellphone, pick a specific song they want, and never share the experience of sharing music with anyone beyond their social network. Even the corporate record stores such as Tower Records are gone. Beyond the random indie music store and the limited music selections that Target, Best Buy, and Walmart stores offer, there are no more brick and mortar locations to buy music in person.

The movie industry isn't fairing much better either. A victim of the same circumstances, many rental locations disappeared after a surge in the '90's. Similar to searching for a record in a music store, the experience of searching for a VHS tape on a weekend night has vanished. Searching shelf by shelf, glancing at past movies you never heard of, but had cool box covers, you give a random movie a shot because the description sounded like something you and your friends might enjoy. Now this experience is gone as well.

With technology like Blu-ray in existence, physical movie media is holding on just a little longer than the music industry is. Red Box locations have replaced Blockbuster Video stores, but soon may find themselves being purged when more people grasp onto services like Netflix, Hulu, and iTunes.

Best yet, is the reactions you get when today's youth gets their hands on old forms of media that existed before they were even born. Show a kid a LaserDisc and they'll look at you funny. Show a kid an 8-track and they'll have no idea what they're even holding. Vinyl records have a niche market out there thanks to club DJ's, but otherwise, many of the old forms of entertainment media has been lost on the youth.

Never again will a kid have to remember to rewind a video tape before returning it to the video rental store. Never again will a kid have to flip over a music cassette to hear the music on side two. And I doubt that ever again, will a kid holding a large boombox on his shoulders or over his head, a la John Cusack style, ever be something that the "cool" kids do again.

Tower Records photo uploaded by Caldorwards4 at Wikipedia.com