When is Enough Enough?

The following was tweeted by @dosomething DoSomething.org:

"Saw a lot of middle schoolers with iPhones over the weekend. How young is too young to get a cell phone?"

My mind started wandering...
...A cell phone in middle school seems OK, but probably not a smart phone.
Then...Why is a cell phone in middle school OK? A few years previously, we were wondering if our high school students should have cell phones. And that whole texting thing? That's just anti-social. ;)

Then...When I was in high school, I thought it would be the coolest thing ever to have my own red trimline phone in my bedroom. You know, so I wouldn't have to stretch the pigtail cord of the family's one phone from the wall mount in the kitchen down the hall to my bedroom to have a few minutes of privacy. Push-button wasn't even on the radar yet...I knew nothing but rotary dial. My parents certainly didn't think we should have our own phone. They were still happy we had a private line instead of the party line we had when I was very young. Of course, everyone deserved a private line...but one phone per household was plenty. Teenagers shouldn't spend so much time talking on the phone anyway.

Then...how about music? I never did get my trimline (and I survived), but I do remember getting my first radio in middle school. I loved this thing! "It's an S... It's an O... It's a crazy radio!" Then in high school, my parents surprised me with a used stereo/turn-table/tape-deck with separate speakers (huge ones, of course). I was the envy of my friends.

Then...thinking about stereos...I remembered visiting my grandparents when I was about thirteen. I was trying to figure out the console phonograph. "How do you change stations on this?" I asked. The reply was "Oh! I suppose you listen to those FM stations." Apparently they hadn't discovered the need  for FM yet and were happy listening to AM. FM in their mind was apparently for the young and on-the-edge crowd. I wonder if my grandparents thought I was too young for FM?
Then...Compare that to these portable tiny iPod thingies that they take everywhere and can plug them directly into their ears and never be without music, distraction, creativity, inspiration! It truly is unnatural. There's just no need for that.

Then...VCR's! Certainly no need for movies in the home! They are just another luxury. Of course we deserved multiple TV's by then, but not VCR's.

Then...When did we start deserving even one TV? Growing up, our neighbors didn't have a TV. It wasn't that weird...we felt privileged instead of thinking of them as lacking. Their whole family would come over annually to watch The Wizard of Oz, and again for the Miss America Pageant. (I just realized the strangeness of those two choices). It was a party!

"Too young for what?"
"Need is a funny word"

Evil is not inherent in any thing, but in the intention of the person using it.

If We Had Known

If we had known....
Would we have had the strength not to...?