How do 9 and 11 year olds connect with 80 year old grandparents who live in separate parts of the country? What about the nieces and nephews in their 20’s who keep totally different hours to the rest of us (and err, actually don’t want us on their social media accounts)? The aunt in Australia?
It’s a modern problem — how do we stay in touch with family when each generation uses different technology?
We’re considering getting rid of the home phone. I haven’t written a proper letter in years and soon calling for a long chat will be considered as obsolete as sending smoke signals. Oh yes, and I’m told email is dead.
So how do I share information? With my friends it’s overly long text messages. With my parents it’s calling them in the car when stuck in traffic and then everyone else it’s an inconsistent mash up of old and new technologies.
As someone who works in communications for a living and as a mum, I see it as mostly my job to keep the wider family up to date with cross country results, school reports, the latest outfit the poor dog has been stuffed into and how my 11 year old is nearly as tall as her grandmother.
I figure there are about 15 people in the world who find this stuff interesting. Our families. They’ll pore over the photos and laugh out loud. They understand that when I post a photo of my father teaching his granddaughter the card game Patience, a long-standing family tradition is being passed on.
For us it’s a really busy time of life, with work and kids. I also want to step back and let the kids communicate directly with family, without having to remember to pass on a text message or continually say ‘remember to call your grandmother.’
This is where kin2kin fits in. It’s a way for us to communicate with parents, sisters, nieces and nephews and for the kids to share their photos too. I can let them post exactly what they want, knowing the people that love them most are the only ones that will see them.
On kin2kin we post photos of school art, hilarious little notes they’ve written and countless photos of the dog. And no, I don’t want to share these on Instagram or Facebook. I have no idea how the kids will feel about me sharing photos of them when they’re older, so on my own social media platforms I share images of them sparsely.
I also love kin2kin for being social media ‘training wheels’ for my girls. When they post and see comments from their 21 year-old cousin, who they adore, they’re learning how to post and what to say.
Even when they get let loose on their own social media accounts, we’ll still use kin2kin. I wasn’t surprised my 84 year-old father picked it up easily but I was extremely surprised that my mother did (the electric typewriter stood in a box for four years back in the 1980’s). Well now she’s in her 80’s and she’s sharing with us on kin2kin and it’s great.
We found the key to getting the family on board is to get the kids to sit with them and get them connected. Make sure you set it up so they can share photos directly from their phone. The only thing I’d love to see is the ability to share short videos.
kin2kin connects generations in a beautifully simple way. For us it’s a one-stop shop for sharing the little and big moments that out of town family would otherwise miss.
SALLY PATERSON is the mum to two daughters and the Media & Communications Manager for the Sir Peter Blake Trust, where she gets to help inspire and mobilise the next generation of Kiwi leaders, environmentalists and adventurers.
