Pop-cultural anthropology

I was watching an older TV show (read that as: very standard-def) the other night, when an incredibly amusing thought occurred to me.

You know the old pop culture convention where someone makes a phone call on a land line, and someone else quietly listens on another phone on the same line, overhearing everything that’s said, thus introducing some complication to the plot?

Kids who have only ever known cell phones aren’t going to have even the slightest freaking clue as to what that‘s all about. “What the hell!?” I can hear them saying from the future. “Didn’t these people have any privacy measures in place!?”

And yet I look at kids a few years older than my son, using things like Facebook and Twitter and phones with GPS-based location tagging that you have to opt out of, and I ask the same question.