Stupid Stories

Strange Teen FaceTime Phenomenon Eating All Our Internet Bandwidth!!

Last Edited: 2014-02-16 19:13:21

I've noticed that both the girls in our house do this. They will beg to connect to the wifi (which is usually MAC address blocked because that's the only discipline available), FaceTime with their friends on their phones. All that is pretty normal and expected. What's weird is that they will sit there and not talk to each other and put the video on pause so they cannot see each other

What i don't get is that there's a few million dollars in communication equipment between the teens that is being used, but then negated by their actions.

It is cute that they open this tunnel of connection and just know they are connected. But the mystique is lost when they don't bother communicating with each other.

So that's the set up, here's how it's part of the problem.. I literally just had a dream two nights ago where I was explaining what the word "bandwidth" was to some kid that asked me.

In my dream it filled up a Dixie cup with water from a garden hose. I explained that that one cup is a device like a phone and the garden hose can only let so much internet through at one time. I set out more Dixie cups and moved the hose back and forth over them and said, "see how when you have more devices, it takes more time to get the internet to all the devices."

When I told him this is how things could get slowed down network-wise he responded with, "whatever" and walked away.

Punk kid.

Anyway. I think it's funny that when they are NOT face timing a friend while face timing a friend, they complain that their Walking Dead episode doesn't load as fast as it should to calm their impatient, instant gratification generation.