Human Writes: Who knows what a rotary dial phone is?

Millennials won't have a clue what these things are Photo: Filepic

Every now and then, my kids ask me when they can have a mobile phone. I usually try to fob off the question. “Not anytime soon!” I answer tartly. But I’ve somehow agreed that they can have one in their teens, which is probably sooner than I’d like in my son’s case. He’s far too screen-crazy for my liking, but then he’s also screen-savvy, which very much reflects his generation.

When I told my children that I never had my own phone as a teenager, they looked at me quizzically. Most of the older teens that they know have their own phones; that’s the new normal. And when I told them that, in fact, growing up, my family only had one phone in the house, they looked at me as if I had just told them that I had grown up in a cave.