Growing up, Pops used to refer to me as part of the generation gap, but today we don’t have a generation gap. We have a generation Grand Canyon!

Today a two-year-old can unlock an iPhone and open and close their favourite app by themselves. When I was that age, I was eating dirt.

However, the new gap should be the communication gap; sure, the diddly-bops are walking around looking down on their phone like in a scene of The Walking Dead — in their isolated world, utterly oblivious of their surroundings, with little white doohickeys in their ears.

But that’s where the problem is: the inability to communicate with a human being standing next to them.

Gone are the days when two people walking towards each would say, “Good morning”. Right now, I would even settle for a “what’s up”. But nothing. The only interaction you get is a view of the top of their head. However, there is a small upside to this. I like to see how a man much younger than myself has gone prematurely bald and how I have more hair than they do. It gives me that feeling of peeing in a black suit — no one notices, but it gives you that warm sensation.

It has gotten to a point now that even a family going out to dinner is doomed to failure before it even starts. You will see the expression of high hopes on the parents’ faces as they think the family outing will somehow build a bond with their children and mend those bridges that have been burnt down with time. You’re sadly mistaken, mate!

The parents’ heads drop, and they bury their faces in the menu specials as they see their brat kids bring out the dreaded phones. They start by taking pictures of themselves with their heads bent at various angles with different expressions; they come to the editing of the images to see what looks like to best one to use on their social-media page. By the way, no mention that Mom and Dad have taken them out to dinner, at about which time the wife will say, “Darling, I need a drink. Get me a whisky. Neat.”

Before the first course arrives, they have now posted to all their friends that they are out on the town. By the time desserts come, a picture has been taken of every plate, edited, and posted with such care that it would envy Steven Spielberg. The parents, however, are nervously looking around the restaurant, hoping they don’t see anyone they know that witnesses this breakdown of the family unit; now, the mother is finishing off her third Scotch.

We all know that the advancement of technology is mostly a good thing; but there are some negatives, such as the loss of jobs, making our lives sedentary and the extra expense. But the most damaging is the lost art of one-on-one communication, and building relationships with family and friends.

We need to remember the days when the family would sit together at the dinner table and actually talk to each other, find out what’s going on in their children’s lives, interact and communicate. If not, we are doomed to become strangers in our own family.