Let’s try a little experiment. Using your hands, mime what it looks like to talk on the phone. I bet you made that hand shape where your thumb and pinky both stick out, right?
Now, if you have any kids who were born in the last few years, ask them to mime what it looks like to talk on the phone. It’ll probably be different, as this hilarious viral TikTok video demonstrates.
The video, posted by TikTok user @yadirycz, alternates in different scenes between her asking her adult partner and her daughter, born in 2017, to show her how you “talk on the phone” and “take a picture.” Smartphones and kids amiright?
@yadirycz Everone has to try this its too cute
Predictably, the adult shows how to “talk on the phone” by using that thumb-and-pinky sign—a ubiquitous signal for talking on the phone for anyone old enough to remember when phones had curved shapes with earpieces and mouthpieces. The little girl, however, holds her hand like she’s holding an iPhone, with its plain, rectangular shape.
It’s the same when the question is to show “how you take a picture.” The adult makes a sign for a camera that probably looks familiar to most of us — with his hands in a square and one finger on top, pressing down on where the shutter button should be.
But, of course, smartphones don’t have shutter buttons — so when the five-year-old is asked to do the same, she holds her imaginary “camera” and squeezes one side, like you would to take a picture on a smartphone with a touch screen.
It will be fascinating to see what else changes for this younger generation as they grow up with so much technology. One commenter may have already been on to something when they wrote, “Plot twist… ask em both to roll down a window.”