The YouTube comedy team Fine Bros. recently introduced a group of children to a rare and ancient technology—a rotary phone.
The kids, whose ages range from 5 to 13, knew the device was, indeed, a telephone, but the extent of their knowledge pretty much ends there. While such devices were the norm for their parents and grandparents, the wide-eyed reactions from the children illustrate that, to them, a phone is an electronic device no bigger than a blackboard eraser.
“How does this even work?” asked one child.
When asked how they know the device is a phone, the kids explained that they recognize it from history books, movies, and, in a few cases, their parents.
“I just know that my iPod is not like this,” one child said.
The concept of long-distance calling was just as foreign. And pay phones? One kid said that sounded like “torture.” While the experiment illustrates the advances in phone technology (rotary phones can’t even text!), one kid had an interesting take on what it all meant.
“This is why humans are de-evolving,” he said.
Let’s hope nobody shows them an 8-Track player.
Screengrab via The Fine Bros. / YouTube
