Skype is almost as old as I am, and it is too late for me to ever use it — the video and messaging app is now shut down for good. Such is the case for young people at large, who have grown up with a constantly shifting ground beneath them.

That pattern is most salient in the realm of technology, where innovations and updates to innovations function exponentially. Hard to believe that, once, Skype was so popular, and so new, as to be the sort of metonym for “video calling” that Zoom or FaceTime are now. Yet that brevity is a typical experience of Generation Z: Nothing stays for long, because something more worthwhile is imminent. What to hold onto is lost in the mix.