Disclaimer: Whatever discussed in this post is an imaginary scenario, since as a student of mathematics, one is trained to hold ideas and arguments(for or against) in the head(also considered as Random Access Memory) and evaluate them. I do not have expertise in Information Technology or in computer programs or creating Apps etc, but only so much knowledge as an Information Technology consumer of services. The writings below are a series of random thoughts or ideas arranged serially to give an impression to the reader that the argument is cogent like it's connecting the dots in the reader's mindscape. So this is just an attempt at assuming the reader to be a potential customer to a Information Technology Marketing person/department. If this is an original idea, I attest that it's an original from me and I request people who use the idea presented here to cite the name Aravind Rajesh N, when they do so. Also I request people who make use of the idea commercially to compensate me suitably as per industry standards by writing a cheque to the above name or transferring to the following UPI address- 9486238627@paytm
The way school going children communicated in 1980-90's and the way school pupils communicated each subsequent decade would have huge variance. I don't know, whether any doctoral thesis had been done from this angle, if not done such an effort is bound to offer immense insight as to how technological developments and the increasing percolation of such technological tools to younger age groups are helping the school going kids to leverage such developments to communicate among peers so as to bypass the prying eyes of parents and school administrators.
The maximum communication that a school kid in 1980 to 90's would have done to chat with peers in school breaks and while commuting from house to school and back. At most they can speak through landline phones.
During 1990 to 2000 there were pagers and cellphone which were popular as a tool for communicating using sms or calls. The major constraint was the prohibitive cost (which is relative)of the service offered by pagers and cell phones of this time.
During 2000 to 2010, cell phones got miniaturised and the technological advance and computing power enabled transformation of cell phones into mini computers and the Internet phenomenon during this time enabled browsing websites through Internet cafes which morphed into offering an avenue to school students to network with peers across geographical boundaries. Chat rooms and video games connected through Internet offered a way to chat with fellow gamers. The parental oversight started going for a toss probably during this time and till now it hasn't been regained if I'm correct. Blue tooth or infrared enabled phones ensured communication among teens discreet, say there is a get together and blue tooth enabled phones were used to message between peer groups and hopefully were not traceable by inquisitive parents, unlike sms or cell phone calls.
2010 to 2020 a defining decade where the novelty of Internet has worn away and applications built with Internet as a backbone (or as an invisible infrastructure) started gaining prominence and increasing acceptance. The time lapse of technological percolation across the generation(grand father to father to son to grandson)probably got reversed during this decade. Internet based shopping even though available in the previous decade got main stream here ,with anyone having a bank account or a wallet being able to buy things from anywhere. In this scenario communication between people took on a life of its own. The advent of Apps and the increasing modularity in designing an app with drag and drop functionality has probably spawned an entire generation of kids to bypass the parental oversight in securing their communication channels among peers. The cohort of such kids are maturing into twenty something billionaires because of the network effect of technology which was previously supplied by Business Schools. The educational administrators recognised this technological leap among kids and started using computers and ppt presentations in class rooms instead of black boards with free WiFi connection thrown in.Text books as reference materials are used as a supplement while the main goto domain was online content. In this scenario it's normal for a class room of kids to arrange for an app to be created by pooling their 30 days of pocket money, about which only they know of. So that whatever they are communicating among themselves stays with them. The name of the app can be any number or a alphanumeric thing and needn't be hosted on Google Play. So how dò you search for those apps.This kind of shared experiences are probably cementing their school life friendships. Parents need to be aware of this. The inspiration for this writeup was an article in ET or Times of India and also an advertisement in ET NOW about two working parents discussing about their school going kid's spending on an App. This digital native generation would obviously be aware of the ever-present surveillance mechanism of Internet and probably are creating virtual worlds in virtual reality. Alternative universes or identities are being created in virtual online spaces where the role of an admistrator is held by this generation so as to cement their shared experiences and make it unreachable to parents and school or college administrators. Let's hope better sense prevails among them.
The above writeup is an attempt to bring awareness to readers about various plausible scenarios and the above scenarios discussed needn't be real.
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