Okay, if you're Gen X or older, you grew up with watches to tell time. And not just tell time, but to keep your time. You were just as (more?) likely to hear, in the 70s and 80s, someone ask, "What time do you have?" than "What time is it?" because everyone acknowledged that, unless you had the Naval Observatory clock on the phone, that you could be a few minutes off.

During a meeting, you could look at your watch not just to see the time, but to see your time. You could leave a minute or two early because "That clock over the door is slow; sorry, have to run." It was socially acceptable.

In fact, those are two of the "sore thumb" cultural changes I've noticed in the last 20 years:

  • People stopped wearing watches
  • Nobody asks if you have the time, they ask what time it is since our smartphones all said the same thing.

But now the Apple Watch, largely through the middle-class & up, near-and-truly bougie culture's emphasis on fitness and measuring EVERYTHING, is everywhere. It's cool. The watch is even always-on now. A few small glances in almost any situation is no big deal. 

Why is it okay for Gen Z+ers to look at their watch? Why would millennials, who grew up in the period where the time was known, not find watches offensive? They didn't learn to tolerate this distraction like old folk did.

I think the answer is that my question is at least partially a false premise: Millennials don't care as much as the older generations if someone has their entire phone out in a meeting. Which is largely because X's grew up in a time when, if you weren't paying attention to the main thing, you were barely paying attention to it at all. You don't bring a newspaper to the dinner table because you would give the newspaper all of your attention. 

No longer! Now we don't even eat dinner together so we can watch TV and surf. Divided attention is the norm (he said uncontroversially). If anything, a watch glance is less offensive than a phone interaction, which is still okay.

What's most interesting, then, is that this is one place where the Venn Diagram, X vs M, has an overlap for completely different reasons. Xers think it's okay to look because of the legacy excuse that you need to know your time and Mers think it's okay because why the heck wouldn't you?

At least that's today's working theory. For me. YMMV. 

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