Over my eighteen year lifetime, I’ve seen my share of media. As a four year old, I would record movies off the TV using a VHS. I can remember having several VHS tapes of all my favorite Disney movies. I owned cassette tapes of sing-alongs. I remember using a floppy disk for a project in the second grade. My parents upgraded the TV to include a DVD player and we started buying DVDs. I was given a CD player to listen to my sing-alongs (and later and MP3 player). I had a flash drive by the time I was in the fifth grade.

Truly it is amazing to know that I am a part of the generation that lived through the shift in media. We were the ones who saw the changes in technology. We weren’t immediately born into it. We were introduced to different aspects of it and were able to appreciate them both.

Apple’s release of the iPhone 7 and wireless earbuds made me realize that corded headphones will soon become obsolete media. I personally appreciate corded headphones and their ability to not be lost or easily broken; however, Apple sees the corded headphone as a hindrance and therefore must be replaced by wireless ones. Of course, Beats made wireless headphones popular as well, but with the iPhone’s exclusion of a headphone jack, the wireless headphone craze is bound to pick up speed. Truly, corded headphones will soon become old media.

It is interesting to look at the shifts between new and old media and how they’ve been such an important part in this generation. We were the kids who went from watching “Hercules” on VHS to watching “Mean Girls” on DVD to watching “Twilight” on Netflix. Times are changing, and luckily we are that bridge to keep both the old media and new media alive.