For generations we have looked to our elders as the knowledge keepers. Now knowledge is stored in bits and bytes, and shared in video format. A boy doesn’t look to dad or granddad to learn how to shave, he learns on YouTube. A girl learns to apply foundation and makeup from Instagram Reels or TickTock. Changing a headlight on your car? There’s a YouTube video with your exact make and model showing you every step. Cooking, traveling, losing weight, gaining muscle, putting contact lenses in, or beating a level on your favourite video game? You are probably going to search for how to do it online before you ask someone for help.

Something to recognize is that many knowledge keepers are the ones sharing and creating the videos we seek, so in a way, their knowledge is still being transferred. Just like people before the internet looked to books for wisdom and insight, seeking a video of someone doing the exact task you are going to do is a very useful way to learn. This isn’t an issue of knowledge being lost, and in fact, is a useful way to store and share information. The question is, what is being lost?

What social interactions between generations are being left out of the YouTube ‘How To’ era? Is there a kind of wisdom being lost, or is it just a loss of connection?

I’m conflicted when thinking about this. Part of me thinks that we are disconnecting from our knowledge keepers, our elders, our storytellers, and that we are missing out in a shared, personal experience. And yet I also think of a kid in a remote town without a library learning about our universe online from physicist Brian Cox. Or a child of a single parent who works two jobs getting an online tutorial on a topic their busy parent has no time to give them. How lucky are they to have the internet fill the knowledge gap?

We can access our knowledge keepers online as well as face-to-face, it’s not an either/or situation… but I guess that what I’m wondering is if we haven’t forgotten that there is a richness to learning in-person from our knowledge keepers? Are we too quick to use Google or Chat GPT to seek quick answers and missing out on a story, an interaction that builds a core memory? Are we losing a richness of experience that comes with sitting with our elders and learning from them?