Debt Crisis , Immigration , Technology And In-Person Meeting

I made a post yesterday about the surprise my best friend gave me by coming to Greece without telling me, and how we spent the day with other childhood friends in person after a long time. This gave me an idea to write a post about how technology has helped us stay in touch with friends, but at the same time, made in-person meetings less common for newer generations.

I was born into the generation where most of the current technological advances were made, or their usage became a part of our everyday life. So, according to this chart, I am a Millennial
image.png source
but because of my older brothers, I am more inclined towards the beginning of Generation X. As I grew older, technology became more and more a part of my childhood and teenage years. Online gaming, Facebook, smartphones, Instagram, Viber, WhatsApp, etc., were some of the things that I used extensively. However, unlike some of my peers, I never thought that making a video call is the same as an in-person meeting.

I have many childhood friends who now live abroad. They all left Greece around the same time seeking better working environments and higher salaries. After the Global Economic crisis of 2008, Greece had its own debt crisis, which started at the end of 2009. It almost saw Greece leaving the Eurozone and resulted in a new refunding of our debt with new loans from the EU and the IMF. The signing of three memorandums of understanding in 2010, 2012, and 2015 all guided a restructure of Greece's economic policies, which included spending cuts, shrinking of the public sector, and salary reductions in both the public and private sectors. This led to many young people leaving the country to find jobs in other European countries, and three of my closest friends were among them.

All three of them left for the Netherlands and Germany around 2016. Over the past seven years, we have been constantly speaking via FaceTime, but whenever they visit Greece on vacation or to see their families, I always try to clear my days to spend as much time with them as possible. This is because even though we speak at least three times a week via FaceTime, nothing can really replace the in-person contact and the feeling it brings.

So my conclusion is that every generation is seeing technology with a different point of views but technology has allowed us to stay in touch with your childhood friends and family who have moved abroad or is hard to meet face to face very often . But we always have to keep in mind that technology has made it easier to communicate with friends from a distance, it can also create a sense of distance or detachment when compared to in person meetings and that's why we all have to try to find time to engage in more face to face meeting.

For anyone wanting to learn more about the Debt crisis in Greece.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_government-debt_crisis

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6 comments
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Looks like we are from the same timeline born in the 80s. I agree and feel the words that you put in here. Being an immigrant living in a different country from where I was born, I understand the value of meeting my friends in person. There is a unique gap when not meeting your friends and family in person for a long time. I have not met my friends from junior college for almost 10 years now although we facetime weekly.

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I think also it's a different feeling to experience than to have learned from others. I know how disastrous the 2008 crash was but I didn't know it was that much.

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Yes it’s totally different. In Greece we saw a 25% reduction in our GDP. And for the lowest paid it was even worst

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