Just within the past few months, it has been announced that ToysRUs will be closing its doors by the end of June to the beginning of July. Of course, this isn’t the only brand we grew up with who met an ending like this. Blockbuster Video, the family video store where you would go and rent movies, shut down in 2013 due to declining sales and competition from Netflix. Kmart & Sears might not be completely gone, but they have been on the brink of bankruptcy for a long time now and have been closing stores left and right. 

Most of us grew up going to ToysRUs to buy that toy we were dying to get, or going to Blockbuster with our family to pick out a movie for family night, or even being dragged into a Sears so our parents could go look at the TV’s or the appliance section every time we went into the mall. At the time, we probably didn’t think much about what was going on. But now we realize that kids in the future (and even now) won’t have experiences like ours due to the closure of these stores. 

Of course, seeing brands we grew up with suddenly disappear is hard, but it’s a part of the changing times. Most people prefer online shopping now over actually getting their kids into the car and dragging them to whatever store they need to go to. 

We are the first generation to grow up with electronics and the internet at our finger tips. Even so, we are not as reliant on them as younger kids are now. When we were younger, we would get off the school bus and go right out to play with our friends. Whether it was playing with chalk, hunting for bugs and toads, or using our imagination, it was a special time that most of us look back on as a simpler and more innocent time. Now, the kids in my own neighborhood barely even play outside. 

Our parents grew up without technology, while the next generation of kids (ages 12 and under) grew up with the internet just a click away. But what about us? We grew up in a transitional period of time. We had internet but it wasn’t as advanced or relied upon as it is now.

Remember when we would watch Bill Nye The Science Guy on the TVs on the carts in school? Or when we would use the projector to learn about geometry and shapes? Now we have the overhead projector that hooks up to the computer, so we don’t need either of those things anymore. They have been obsolete in classrooms for some time now. 

Eventually, we will be given a laptop to use in school as our notebook. It will be an unusual transition for high school kids because we’ve been taking notes with a pen and paper since we started to take notes. Some people think that writing in general will become obsolete one day and be replaced with typing. 

Of course, nothing can last forever, especially things we grew up with and have fond memories of. Companies go out of business, technology that was revolutionary at the time will eventually be irrelevant, and children now don’t want to go dig for worms in the dirt or go play outside with nothing but their imaginations. They prefer to stay inside on their iPhone and let all of these great memories to us fade away with their generation.