Gen Xers and Older Millennials Say They’d Prefer to Live in an Era Before the Internet

A new Harris Poll shared exclusively with Fast Company found that most Americans would prefer to live “in a simpler era before everyone was obsessed with screens and social media,” reports Fast Company, adding “this sentiment is especially strong among older millennials and Gen Xers.”

The Wrap summarizes the poll results:

77% of middle-age Americans (35-54 years old) say they want to return to a time before society was “plugged in,” meaning a time before there was widespread internet and cell phone usage…

63% of younger folks (18-34 years old) were also keen on returning to a pre-plugged-in world, despite that being a world they largely never had a chance to occupy. In total, 67% of respondents said they’d prefer things as they used to be versus as they are now.
“Interestingly, baby boomers were slightly less eager to time hop, with only 60% of people over 55 saying they’d prefer to return to yesteryear,” notes Fast Company:
While Americans may want to unshackle themselves from the burden of constant connectivity, an overwhelming 90% also said that being open-minded about new technologies is important, a finding that mostly held up across demographics. About half of respondents even said they tend to adopt new technologies before most people they know…

Just over half said they found keeping up with new technologies overwhelming, and about that same percentage said they believe technology is more likely to divide people than unite them. Here, it was younger respondents who took the most pessimistic view, with 57% of people under 35 agreeing that technology divides, versus 43% who disagreed.


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