Table of Contents
The newest generations don’t know a time without the internet, and there is a lot we can learn from them. Increasingly, whole lives are lived online, and those lives are often just as rich and varied as the life you live outside your phone and your computer.
Learn
Learning isn’t just for pandemic times. Many people were already well accustomed to learning online before the pandemic hit, and at all levels and in all areas. Whether you’re learning English from Beijing or getting online guitar lessons Rahway NJ, there’s a lot to learn online.
Work
Working from home became standard during the worst parts of the pandemic, but it was already normal for many people and it’s likely to continue to be an important part of many industries.
Shop
One industry that is increasingly moving online is retail. This accelerated dramatically when the coronavirus hit, and while it is likely that in-person shopping will bounce back, it is also likely that a lot of shopping, including a lot of everyday shopping, will continue to happen online.
Socialize
As a general rule, most people prefer meeting with their friends face-to-face, but most young people have at least some friends that they met and became friends with online, and most young people prefer texts, emails, or video chatting to the more old-fashioned phone call. Of course, trends will change over time, but the shift to digital socializing cannot be ignored.
At this point, no one can pretend that the internet is a fad, or that you can reasonably live a full life without at least some internet access. As more and more activities move online, our world becomes more and more digital. Internet literacy will be as important to future generations as English literacy was after the invention of the book and the printing press. It may be a relatively quiet revolution, but it is a revolution nonetheless.