Remember when the worst thing about a party was running out of film? Now every gathering feels like a photo shoot waiting to happen, complete with retakes and filters and the constant pressure to look like you’re having the time of your life.
I turned 70 this year, and while my friends reminisce about the music of the ’70s or the freedom we had as kids, what I really miss is something simpler: living without an audience.
Back then, your Saturday morning pancakes didn’t need to be Instagram-worthy.
Your walk in the park was just a walk in the park, or you could have a bad hair day without it being documented for eternity.
After teaching high school English for over thirty years, I’ve watched this shift happen in real time.
The students I taught in the ’90s lived their lives.
The ones I taught before retiring at 65? They performed them.
Now, in my seventies, I see how exhausting this constant performance has become for all of us.
The weight of always being watched
You know what’s funny? We used to complain about Big Brother watching us.
Now we voluntarily broadcast every meal, every workout, every thought that crosses our minds.
We’ve become our own surveillance system, and somehow we’re okay with it.
I was at my granddaughter’s birthday party last month, and I counted: more photos were taken in those two hours than probably exist of my entire childhood.
Here’s what struck me most: Half the kids weren’t even enjoying the cake. They were posing with it, waiting for their parents to get the perfect shot.
When did we start living life in third person, watching ourselves from the outside instead of feeling it from within?
Born in the ’50s, I grew up in a world where memories lived in your head, not in the cloud.
They were softer around the edges, maybe not perfectly accurate, but they were yours.
You could embellish them, forget the awkward parts, let them age like wine instead of preserving them like pickles.
The thing is, when every moment is potentially public, you start editing your life before you live it.
Will this look good in a photo? How will this sound as a caption? Should I order the salad because it’s more photogenic than the soup I actually want?
When moments belonged to the people in them
Back when TV had schedules and missing a show meant it was gone forever, we had a different relationship with time.
Thursday nights meant something because that’s when your favorite show aired.
If you missed it, tough luck, but that also meant when you were doing something else, you were really doing it.
I remember the first concert I went to in 1973, and the only record of it lives in my mind: The way the bass vibrated through my chest, how my friend grabbed my hand during our favorite song, and the ringing in my ears afterward.
Nobody was holding up a phone, blocking my view.
We were all there, present, experiencing the same thing at the same time.
Compare that to the last concert I attended with my adult son.
Half the audience watched through their phone screens, desperate to capture something that was happening right in front of them.
They were so busy documenting the experience, they forgot to have it.
The freedom of forgetting
Here’s something nobody talks about: Forgetting is a gift.
It lets you reinvent yourself, move past embarrassments, and grow beyond your mistakes.
However, when everything is documented, archived, ready to resurface at any moment, you’re trapped in amber.
Every stupid thing you said, every bad outfit, every awkward phase — it’s all there, permanent and searchable.
During my teaching years, I watched students become increasingly anxious about this permanence.
They’d stress over group photos, worry about being tagged in unflattering pictures, panic if someone posted a video of them without permission.
Can you imagine being a teenager and knowing that every mistake might follow you forever?
We used to have the luxury of selective memory.
That disastrous haircut from 1975? It existed only in a few photos tucked in a drawer.
That time you tripped at the school dance? A funny story that got funnier with each retelling, details shifting until it barely resembled reality.
Now? It’s all there in high definition, time-stamped and geo-tagged.
Living for the story instead of the post
You know what we did in the ’70s when something amazing happened? We called our best friend and told them about it.
We savored it first, processed it, made it ours before sharing it with the world.
The story evolved in the telling, became richer, more meaningful.
Now, the impulse is to share first and experience later.
How many sunsets have people watched through their camera app? How many meals have gone cold while searching for the perfect angle?
I take time now to savor small moments without documenting them.
Every sunset I watch from my porch, every conversation with an old friend, every warm hug from my grandchildren — these belong to me and the people in them.
They don’t need likes or comments to be valuable.
Sometimes my grown sons tease me about not posting more photos, but I am making memories.
There’s a difference, and it’s one I think we’ve forgotten.
Finding our way back
I’m not saying we should throw away our smartphones or abandon social media entirely.
The technology itself isn’t evil but, rather, it’s how we’ve let it reshape our relationship with reality that troubles me.
What if we gave ourselves permission to have undocumented experiences again? To go to a restaurant without photographing the food? To take a vacation without posting updates? To have a conversation without checking our phones?
Start small: Choose one meal a week that stays off social media, take a walk without your phone, and have a conversation where you’re fully present, not mentally composing a post about it later.
Remember what it feels like to own your moments again, to be the only witness to your own life sometimes.
The ’70s weren’t perfect, but we knew how to be alone with ourselves, how to sit with an experience, and how to let a moment be exactly what it was without needing to package it for consumption.
Maybe that’s what I miss most: The privacy of our own experiences, the sweetness of memories that belong only to us, the freedom to be imperfect without an audience.
In a world where everything is shared, the most radical act might be keeping something for yourself.
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