While scanning my social media, I found myself sucked into a series of “reels.” That’s what the kids are calling very short video clips — from 15 seconds up to one minute — that gained significant momentum with the launch of the social-media app TikTok.
I am too old for TikTok, but reels have been making their way to Facebook and other social-media platforms.
The reels I was watching showed parents asking their children to pretend their hand was a phone and that they were talking to someone.
In each video, the child would straighten out their hand and place it beside their ear.
Parents were stunned that the phone gesture for the younger generation is no longer a fist with the thumb and pinky extended to form the telephone receiver.
(I want to note that as I wrote that last sentence, I couldn’t remember if it was called a receiver and I googled it to make sure. When is the last time you said “telephone receiver”?
In the videos I watched, more and more parents were filming and posting this experiment. Each time, the child held up a straightened hand.
I didn’t make a video, but I did ask my daughter to perform the task, which she did with a straightened hand held next to her ear.
I find things like this fascinating. I know in the grand scheme of things it’s not important and it doesn’t matter how we gesture for someone to call us. But I highly suggest you put a straightened hand next to your ear and tell someone “Call me later.”
In the videos, some adults seemed a little upset that the old-fashioned phone gesture has been dropped.
I don’t have a strong connection to the old hand gesture and it makes sense that children would update the gesture, as most probably haven’t ever used a landline.
To me, the most interesting part of this is that people are upset that their children aren’t using the same gesture that they grew up using.
There are cultural things, values and morals that I want to instill in my daughter, teachings that I feel will help her grow into a caring adult. Those are parts of me that I hope she can embrace.
Hand gestures, slang and interests are going to be dictated by peers, not me.
I have told my daughter since was very young that she doesn’t have to share my opinions — she is free to think and believe whatever she wants.
The conversation started when she mentioned a large-chain retail shop that I will do anything to avoid. She said: “I love [that store] and a lot of people love [that store].”
It seemed like she wanted me to tell her she was wrong, or to try and convince her to change her mind.
“That’s great if you love it,” I said. “We don’t always have to like the same things.”
We know that there has always been a sibling rivalry when it comes to generations. The younger generation seeks mistakes and character flaws in the older generation, and the older generation shares its apprehension of the younger generation being responsible for society in the future.
Is the hand-gesture for telephone an example of this?
When a rotary phone was the standard phone in homes, the motion of calling someone involved one hand as the receiver and the other cranking the numbers on the wheel.
The rotary hand gesture has been retired and we are all fine.
For your own enjoyment, ask a child you know to pretend their hand is a phone. What do they do? Does it bother you?
