The Only Generation to Know Both Worlds

The Only Generation to Know Both Worlds

I’m Gen X. I built a treehouse way too high using rusty nails, a half-sharp handsaw from the garage and scrap wood that my friends and I collected from all of our houses. It wasn’t measured, it wasn’t inspected and it definitely wasn’t safe, but it was ours.

I’m Gen X, which means I was outside from the time I woke up until it got dark. There was no Hydro Flask, no Stanley tumbler and usually not even a thought about food or water. I don’t remember anyone scheduling a hydration break. We drank from a garden hose when we got thirsty and went home when the streetlights came on.

I grew up in a semi-rural area on a large property surrounded by woods, and when I was young, those woods became a magical forest. There were always new trees to discover, brush to climb through, creeks to explore and deep spots where we could swim. A broken snow-fence picket became a sword, an appropriately shaped branch became a hunting rifle and a giant pile of topsoil became my mountain.

My Hot Wheels cars had roads that traveled up, down, around and through that mountain, and I created entire worlds with nothing more than dirt, imagination and a few small cars. I rode my bike up and down the driveway, through the neighborhood and along gas-line paths that cut through the woods. There were no GPS trackers, no location-sharing apps and no text messages asking where I was. My parents generally knew I was somewhere outside, and that seemed to be enough.

On rainy days, the adventures moved indoors. There were LEGO bricks, Star Wars toys, Lincoln Logs, model cars to build and my Lionel train. I constantly experimented with different track layouts, trying to figure out how many turns, switches and bridges I could fit into the attic.

I also took apart a lot of bicycles. Sometimes I wanted to see how they worked, sometimes I wanted to see how I could modify them and sometimes I took them apart and realized I was somehow missing a part to put them back together. Those bikes were painted different colors and rebuilt into different versions until I reached my final childhood bike, a 1985 Schwinn Predator Nighthawk, which I still own.

I was fortunate to grow up when I did because I had room to wander, time to be bored and the freedom to turn ordinary objects into whatever I needed them to be. I am also fortunate to have lived long enough to see the astonishing technological advances happening all around us, although I did not arrive in the digital world overnight. I grumbled my way into it one device at a time.

Slowly Entering the Digital World

My first major technological leap was a Brother word processor that I bought to make college papers a little more manageable. It had a small screen that showed only a few lines of text, but at the time it felt revolutionary because I could edit a sentence before it was permanently typed onto the paper.

In 1995, I bought a new truck that came with a bag phone, which was a large mobile phone stored in a zippered carrying case. Calling it “mobile” was technically accurate, although carrying it around felt more like transporting medical equipment. In 1996, I stepped up and bought an actual cell phone because a couple of my friends had one. It was a Nokia 1610, reliable, nearly indestructible and dangerous if you dropped it on your toe.

Then, in 1997, I bought a used laptop that eventually replaced the Brother word processor, and at some point I connected it to the internet through a dial-up modem. Anyone who remembers dial-up internet can still hear the sound.

I began scrolling through portals, directories and homepages, back when websites were places you visited intentionally. You typed in an address, searched through a directory or clicked from one page to another, and there was no endless feed waiting to decide what I should see next. I explored the internet, but I did not spend much time there because it was still separate from everyday life. You went online, and then you went back to living.

I was easing into it.

In 2006, I joined Facebook, and in 2011, I bought my first iPhone when it became available through Verizon, which meant I could finally put away my Motorola Razr. As a side note, I still have all my old cell phones in a box in my garage, which means I have apparently been unconsciously building a small museum of personal technology.

Then came Instagram, then came Snapchat and then came a much bigger realization that childhood was beginning to change.

Watching Childhood Move Online

In 2012, I started doing trainings that would eventually become Shape The Sky, which I formally founded in 2015, because I could see something happening to young people. Their play was changing, their social lives were changing and their struggles were becoming more visible, but they were also becoming more complicated. The changes were happening slowly, but they also felt incredibly fast.

Young people were no longer simply using the internet to visit websites. They were building identities, forming relationships, comparing themselves to others and carrying their entire social world in their pockets. Mental health struggles were moving online too.

Eating-disorder content was being shared through images of dangerously thin girls using hashtags such as #EDNOS, #MIA and #ANA, and the hashtag #SUICIDE connected young people to millions of posts. Pain that had once remained hidden could now be shared, searched, repeated and reinforced. Some young people found support online, while others found communities that normalized harmful behaviors and pulled them deeper into their struggles.

My first training about social media was in 2012, when I stood in front of adults and tried to explain what I was seeing, what young people were encountering and why we needed to pay attention. Now I am writing this in 2026, and after almost 15 years of watching childhood and adolescence change, I feel blessed to be in a position where I can help parents, educators, counselors and other caring adults try to keep up.

It is not easy, and it is only going to get harder.

Then Came Artificial Intelligence

In late 2022, when ChatGPT was released publicly, I began discussing artificial intelligence in nearly every training because it was clear almost immediately that this was not simply another app or social media platform. This was a different kind of shift.

Since then, the advances have arrived faster and with capabilities that would have sounded impossible only a few years ago. AI can write, generate images, create videos, simulate conversations, provide emotional support, tutor students, analyze information and answer questions about nearly anything, and the technology continues to improve at an astonishing pace.

By the time I celebrate 20 years of providing these trainings, I will probably laugh at how excited I once was to buy one of those new “smartphones with apps” that helped kick off this entire chapter of my work. The smartphone brought the internet into every moment of life, and artificial intelligence may bring a responsive, persuasive and increasingly humanlike presence into every moment as well.

That creates incredible opportunities, but it also creates questions that adults cannot afford to ignore. How will children learn to think when answers are always available? How will they develop relationships when an artificial companion is always willing to listen? How will they understand what is real when images, voices and videos can be generated in seconds? How will parents and professionals offer guidance when the technology changes faster than our rules, research and institutions can respond?

I do not believe the answer is to panic or attempt to stop technological progress because that has never worked, but we do need to remain curious, engaged and willing to learn. Young people need adults who understand enough about their digital world to guide them through it.

The Generation Between Two Worlds

I am Gen X, which means I was born into the last generation in history to experience childhood without the internet, smartphones, social media or artificial intelligence. At the same time, my generation was among the first required to parent children growing up inside the internet age, which meant we had to make rules for devices that did not exist when we were young. We had to explain social media pressures we never personally experienced and help children navigate online relationships, digital reputations, constant comparison and access to nearly unlimited information.

Now we are entering the age of artificial intelligence, and there will never be another generation with quite the same view. We remember what life was like before the internet became woven into nearly every part of daily life, but we have also watched that transformation happen one step at a time.

We know both worlds.

I remember when a stick could become a sword, a rifle or a tool for exploring a creek, and today I can take a picture of that same stick and ask an artificial intelligence system what kind of tree it came from. I feel blessed to have experienced both.

The goal is not to convince children that our childhood was better simply because it was different. The goal is to preserve some of what childhood has always needed, including imagination, independence, face-to-face relationships, time outdoors, opportunities to create and enough boredom to figure out what to do next.

Technology can expand childhood, but it should not consume it. Artificial intelligence can answer questions, but it should not replace curiosity. The internet can connect young people to the world, but it should not disconnect them from the people and places directly in front of them.

I was fortunate enough to grow up with a stick as a toy and to live long enough to have AI tell me what kind of wood that stick might be. Our challenge now is to help young people experience the benefits of this new world without losing everything childhood gave us in the old one.

Because no matter how advanced the technology becomes, every young person is still More Than a Profile.

~Ryan