Growing up I have always heard from my parents and grandparents how families used to be 30 – 40 years ago where people lived together under one roof, as one big happy family. My father once took me to those days through his memories and gave me a glimpse of their house filled with the laughter of his cousins and aunts, the redolence of the delicious food, the ringing of the rotary phone, and a small black and white television which was booked for Ramayana to be watched with the whole family every morning. But everything is subject to change, these huge families also transformed to a smaller size as other family members moved to different locations to explore better prospects. This cultural shift brought the new concept of nuclear families tightly bound with modern individualism. It would have been difficult to connect with people so often especially in this pandemic. Today we are stuck in the most unprecedented situation that has confined us to our homes. But still things went smooth as technology has kept us wired with our near ones all over the world assuring us to never miss out on even a single family member.

On this International day of Families, let’s see the 3 Reasons how technology brings families together

1. Keep wired

Earlier to convey just information, we were required to write a postcard or telegram that took at least 10 days to reach its destination. Well, I cannot imagine a life like that! Where I have to wait for weeks to ask
someone. Should we catch up tomorrow? Technology has made our lives so easy that it enables us to connect to the
farthest relative just in a click. This quick medium has been the biggest relief, especially in corona times.

2. Make & Save Memories

My parents and grandparents have very few photographs to show us, the cameras used back then were not so handy and the cost associated to get the photos to be printed restricted the number of clicks. Today we can
capture endless photos with our family and enjoy the moment without worrying about the reel left or the cost of getting it printed. Technology has also eliminated the issues of losing photos. We have options to save and share images through the cloud, which makes our job easy, allowing multiple family members to access the photos and save them to their personal drives.

3. Collective entertainment

One screen with countless entertainment options satisfying the need of every person in the room has improved the experience of watching television. Back in the 90s I remember, limited movies were featured only on Saturdays and Sundays but no one ever imagined that the world will get access to such an advanced platform like OTT (Over the Top) where a gamut of movies, channels, shows, YouTube, etc. is available carefully curated for us based on our choices. Netflix identified the importance of family and friends by launching a Netflix party that enables its customers to not miss watching movies with family even being at distant locations. So the technology has turned out to be the most important factor in countering the pandemic which kept the world moving ahead and helped us to stay connected with our loved ones nurturing our traditional family values.