The relationship between teenagers and technology is a funny one. Baby boomers, who were fortunate enough to watch the Internet emerge, fully appreciate its worth as an exciting new frontier. As for me? I could be on Mount Kilimanjaro, and I’d probably still whine about the lack of instant messaging. In most aspects of my life, I embody the sociologist’s conception of a typical Generation Y kid. I read blogs. I stream music on YouTube. I know the distinct difference between a “lol” and a “LOLZ!11.” Outwardly, I am totally comfortable in a world of flashing buttons and whirring machines.

But on the inside, I am a lot like your grandmother. When I was eight years old, my mother, a devoted techie, explained to me that cell phones would one day hold everything from cameras to e-mail. Like an old geezer, I freaked and wondered why we couldn’t just use phones to call people. I’ve gotten better since, but I have to admit that when the iPhone first came around, I fearfully declared that touch screens would infiltrate every modern convenience. The thought made me want to hide in a forest and live off of sustenance farming.

It’s an odd mindset to have in Silicon Valley. And yet, I often find myself wondering what it would be like if, say, we just didn’t text.

I have a fledgling theory: I think we would have better social skills. The telephone has been widely used since the beginning of the 20th century, but it’s becoming obsolete. You know those super awkward phone conversations where both parties want to end it but neither one knows how? That’s why people just text now. It’s convenient—too convenient. It’s much easier to impress someone when you have five minutes to come up with something exceptionally witty to type. Maybe if we stopped planning our words so meticulously, we’d develop more natural wit, one that would translate to real life.

Now I’m going to start getting truly irrational: I am concerned by a little phenomenon I like to call computerexia, i.e. a disease in which engineers strive to make gadgets thinner than Keira Knightley at the Oscars. Lightness is important, but the MacBook Air? Too much! I like my computers to have a little meat on their bones. I want to be confident that they’ll actually function if I decide to throw one across the room (I’ve been there, sadly). Like a stubborn driver who won’t let go of that stick shift, I want my bulky computers, flawed as they may be.

My parents look on me with a sort of shame. They both played a part in the tech revolution, and yet here I am, complaining about the things that make my life convenient. But after some meditation, I’ve realized that my fear of innovation doesn’t stem from creepy visions of a robot-induced apocalypse. I’m just a little bit nostalgic. Things were so much simpler when I was five and Barney was on VHS.

I can get over that, though. I know that I will always accept whatever comes my way eventually.

(…But I reserve my right to freak out when artificial intelligence reaches the masses.)