Here’s a question I’ve been pondering this week: How do our media habits change as we get older? It’s a question that was spurred by a conversation I had with a friend a couple nights ago.
My friend Brent is in his mid-30s and is a video game aficionado. Whenever we get together, I always quiz him regarding what he’s been playing and the buzz on hot new games. He’s always got a lot to tell me on this subject.
Our conversation meandered a bit, and it included a digression about the growing popularity of old-school arcade emulations on smartphones. That, in turn, led to some fond reminiscing on my part about the video games I’d plunked hundreds, perhaps thousands, of quarters into during my youth. Arcade games like Zaxxon, Gyrus, Twin Cobra and even the venerable coin-op classic Asteroids. We also talked about our favorite Atari 2600 games—a conversation you can only have if you’re close to a fortysomething vintage, as I am.
During the conversation, I had a realization: Video games hold very little interest for me anymore. I can’t really give you a reason why, but it seems as if I’ve pretty much outgrown them sometime in the last 20 years or so. If I pass an arcade in a mall, I might take a quick peek to see if any classics are gathering dust in the corner and plunk a quarter (or two or four) in for old time’s sake. But other than that, if the medium ceased to exist, I’d hardly notice.
Here’s where things get a bit interesting, though.
As I thought about it, I realized that pattern has not held true for me when it comes to music. I’m as interested and engaged by music today as I was as a teen. I listen to pop, rock and alternative radio. Christian artists and mainstream. I love finding new bands whose sound grabs my attention. I love live music, and I’d be happy going to concerts a couple times a week if I could. I enjoy pondering the messages and parsing the worldviews offered by today’s diverse lineup of artists. And I have an iPod stocked with songs as old as Del Shannon’s 1961 hit “Runaway” and as up to the minute as Switchfoot’s latest single “Dark Horses” which was released this week (and which Plugged In will be reviewing next week).
Why, I wondered, had the appeal of video games faded while music had retained much of its magic for me?
I don’t have a definitive answer to that question. It may be as simple as the practical reality that as a father of three, I simply don’t have hours to devote to video games anymore. (Or the fact that most of them now make this aging old man motion sick!) In contrast, it’s not hard to listen to three or four of my favorite songs on my iPod on the way to work. That said, I suspect music still taps into something deep inside when it comes to my yearnings and emotions in a way that video games simply don’t.
I could say more about my TV, movie and Internet habits, and how each of those has likewise shifted over time. I could also probably write a book about how having children necessarily causes you to look at your media preferences through an entirely new set of lenses. But I’ll stop here and simply say that as we get older, our media predilections seem to meld and morph.
So that’s my story. What about you? How have you noticed your media habits changing over time? We want to hear about the changes you’ve noticed in your tastes, preferences and convictions as you’ve gotten older.
Recent Comments