It was my daughters summer vacations and as usual I was at my best trying to keep her engaged in some creative and playful stuff. As she had shown interest recently reading Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes , I asked her to watch one of my favourite series of ‘Adventures of Sherlock Holmes’ (played by Jeremy Brett).

This surfaced my self-obsession and ignorance of todays Gen Z, within a minute she had her series of comments on picture quality, obsolete phone sets, street lamps , shabby clothes, debilitated dialogues and what not. That’s not all she introduced me to the new series of Sherlock Holmes (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) where Holmes lived in a millennial apartment with mobile in his pocket and all new gadgets to unfold the mysteries. This lead me thinking and writing my beliefs and can now say ‘disbeliefs’ about how story telling has evolved in front of me and it went unnoticed since long.

The conclusion of this calendar year ushers me in a period of reflection as I take a look back at the year that was. It presents the perfect opportunity to look back at how storytelling has changed for the kids.

I need to try and think back to a time before the iPad, Instagram or Justin Bieber to realise that a decade is a loooong time. I have realised since 2010, our world, and indeed the way we tell stories, has changed in a myriad of ways. By listening to the technologically savvy kids today telling stories, we might just gain some insight into how to better reach them with our stories. We might also get a clearer glimpse of the future of storytelling itself.

Change here is inevitable!!

Through the years, technology has enabled humans to employ all types of storytelling: visual stories in images, spoken stories in movies and recordings, and written words on blogs and social media statuses.

However, children today are very different from children centuries ago. At a very young age, children now are being enculturated with media literacy. The norm now is to dazzle, pacify, and overwhelm children with technology based on the assumption that they will have to rely on these same technologies to function within their ever-changing culture.

As technology progressed, so did the forms in which stories were told. Haven’t we truly evolved from the pictures on cave walls to digital stories on different websites and social media handles? However, interest in reading, listening, and watching stories continued despite changes in the content of the stories. The themes developed with time, influenced by contemporary events. The evolution of storytelling over the centuries makes me look forward to the future!