I was born in 1980 when the phone was in the house, it had a cord and a rotary dial. I was born in 1980 when your brain was filled with phone numbers and addresses; where you had a small notepad next to your phone so you can write down who called and why.

I grew up going to school and cleaning the black board with a wet sponge and waiting for it to dry so we can start the next lesson. Back in the olden days (quoting my daughter here) when I was a child, we had no tablets, mobile phones, google and social media. My parents were sending me outside to play and the only rule was: come back in time for dinner. Most of the times, they had no clue where I was and who with or what I was up to.

That first crush in school and the hand written notes, delivered via good friends who knew where we lived. There was a certain innocence to lack of technology, a value lost because of social media. Reality has lost its beauty and joy in front of new technology.

I remember being a teenager and my mum coming home with a massive computer (I believe it was a 286 PC so she can work on her accountancy. OMG – it had the Worms Armageddon game on it. Me and my brother used to fight over it so we can play as much as possible before my mum would take over. I went to Uni and, to be honest, I remember only the library research. there were no computers to actually help with the learning process. I remember having a pager where I could receive short messages from friends.

After my second year of Uni, I got a job in TV and that is where I discovered emails, chats and online life. We used to receive the Mediafax news live and Reuters. I have discovered an entire new world that helped me polish on my English and writing style when playing News Editor at 19. I have to admit that it opened my eyes and I learned how to compare articles, get a bigger picture of events and grow into a curious editor and later on, a producer.

I got used to using technology everywhere. I had a work mobile phone and a personal one. I bought my very first laptop when I was about 24 as well as my very first DVD player with a super cool TV for my room only.

I have embraced technology and welcomed it into my life. I found it fascinating and an endless source of knowledge.

But you see, everything that comes in abundance loses its value. Technology evolved so much to the point where our children are growing up in a virtual reality, a world of fake influencers and zero depth. Children learn to type and handwriting is slowly forgotten. They read on Kindle and slowly forget about the magic of pages and the smell of real books. Technology is not a vast ocean of knowledge anymore but an endless doom scroll leading to people having the attention span of a squirrel. I stare at toddlers clicking on youtube from a video to another, not even processing what they are really watching.

Technology helps if used wisely.