I Wish ‘Zoom’ Had Been Around When I Was a Teenager

There was a lot to love about the 1990s and early-aughts, but geographic undesirability wasn’t one of them

As a Gen Y kid, video-conferencing was virtually (pun intended!) unheard of, back when we were growing up. Not even adults had access to such technology for personal use, a majority of the time. Telephone or in-person meetings were the norm.

Around the mid-1990s, my rural high school began offering a few ITV (Interactive Tele-Visual) courses. They were held in a high-tech windowless room retrofitted for real-time video transmission within our school building.

The head of our Social Studies Department, Mr. Rykken, taught one of his two AP (Advanced Placement) History course sessions in this manner. Students from our school accompanied him in that high-tech windowless room while they were collectively broadcast via ITV to a neighboring school district that didn’t have any AP History instructors on its staff.

At another point during the day, our school’s students had the opportunity to take French language courses via ITV — taught remotely by an instructor from another nearby school district, since our high school only offered Spanish and Latin as part of its Foreign Language Department.

I never took ITV courses at our high school. But I soon had the opportunity to do so when I finished up my remaining high school credits at the local branch of our regional tech college. My Sociology course was fed to us through an ITV system, taught by an instructor named Leonard who was based out of the town of Independence from his own physical classroom.

Likewise, my Psychology course was taught at our location by Monica — our instructor who also happened to be the mother to one of the smartest students from my graduating class — while Monica’s instruction was simultaneously transmitted via ITV to students at the Independence branch.

At the time, I was a wide-eyed Millennial who viewed this instructional technology as groundbreaking.

But, nowadays, it’s the type of classroom setting that would induce yawns and shrugs from a majority of students.

Most “Xennial” Kids Didn’t Even Have Cell Phones

Being at the lower end of the “Xennial” microgeneration (right on the cusp of Gen X and Gen Y), I had a front-row seat to some amazing digital transitions courtesy of cyberspace.

When I was in high school, our “social media” (which was, for the most part, nonexistent) would be limited to Hotmail, Yahoo! Chat, ICQ, AOL Instant Messenger, and standard Internet message boards.

As I moved through college, the platforms expanded to include MySpace, YouTube, LiveJournal, and the earliest incarnation of Facebook. By the late-aughts, Twitter had made its primordial debut.

SmartPhones weren’t a thing. For young folks who did have their own cell phones, these devices were flip phones with basic texting abilities; they first surged in popularity right before 9/11.

I didn’t get one until 2006.

At any rate: You couldn’t just dial up someone and have a two-way conversation with them in real-time over video screens. The technology simply wasn’t there.

In hindsight, this capability would have been a lifesaver for so many of us.

How many times would it have felt clutch for my fraternity chapter to be able to include Brothers and alumni (or guest speakers) as part of our weekly meetings? Most of us would have tried to show up in person; but if someone couldn’t, for whatever reason, they could have joined us via the magic of video feed while most of us were there in the campus-based meeting room.

Or, how many professors throughout the early-aughts would have loved the chance to expand their office hours from the comfort of their off-campus homes? The addition of virtual meetings would have increased the number of students and advisees whom they could service without these instructors having to travel back and forth between the university and their private residences.

In my case — being an autistic college student — having that face-to-face virtual contact with my parents would have done wonders for both their sanity and mine. They could have talked in real-time with both me and other university employees to get me any resources I needed in a cleaner, more efficient manner.

Gen Z Masters These Breakthroughs

By the late-aughts, Skype had gone mainstream. Zoom followed suit, in short order, during the early-2010s.

One of the fitting reasons why members of Gen Z are so often referred to as “Zoomers” is because, along with it being a wordplay on the first letter of their generation’s cohort designation, so many of them were in middle school and high school when Zoom first went global for video-conferencing services.

Thus, Zoomers “zoomed” into digital proficiency — using Zoom itself — from the time they were developing acne. Some even earlier than that! By college, vast numbers of them were acclimated to it.

This has made Gen Z immensely skilled when video calls get incorporated into workplaces, on college campuses, or as a way to stay in touch with long-distance family and friends while at home.

Gen Y, Gen X, and Baby Boomers lag behind them…although certain individuals from these older generations (including myself!) obviously pick up these skills with more finesse than others do.

Zoomers will be parents to the as-of-yet-unborn generation that directly succeeds members of Gen AA (“Generation Alpha”) — seeing how the last of the Alphas will be born within the next 2–3 years.

Consider what remarkable potential that “post-Alpha” generation (those born between the mid-2020s and the late-2030s) will have — in ways most of us alive today can’t even begin to imagine!

Gen AA Carries the Torch

As I wrote about last autumn, Gen Alpha will undoubtedly innovate the groundwork that Gen Z is currently laying for them. The oldest members of Gen AA will be entering legal adulthood around the year 2026 or 2027.

During the height of the coronavirus pandemic, the older Zoomers had their college studies upended by widespread lockdowns. Mid-to-younger Zoomers and the oldest Alphas (“Coronazooms”) had to shift to Virtual School for maintaining their grade school, middle school, and high school curriculums.

Our society is still dealing with the fallout from this. Remedies for helping the Zoomers and Alphas who’ve fallen behind in their education (due to lockdowns) warrant their own entirely separate solution-based article.

But, selfishly, I imagine how I would have done with Virtual School if I had been an adolescent amidst the COVID-19 outbreak.

Seeing how badly I struggled in K-12 school — in terms of social skills, lack of athletic coordination, and grappling with my phobias — I suspect that learning course materials from the comfort of my own home would have been a godsend.

This isn’t to suggest that Virtual School was a “good” thing for most students. Millions of American tweens and teens suffered when deprived of so many hands-on learning activities or in-person social outlets during the day.

What I’m saying is that Zoom represents alternative ways of doing things. It’s a reminder of how there is no one-size-fits-all approach to education.

The fact is that many kids thrive with Virtual School while many others become depressed and despondent from it. This reality should force us to evaluate in what pointed ways video chats — and other new technologies in that vein — can be repurposed to enhance access and customization for students of all backgrounds.

When it comes to education reform and innovative learning — the history we’ve lived can help us to refocus the lens on the future history that younger generations have yet to create.

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