Comment on What Can We Do to Get Youth into Ham Radio?
rf_@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I think it’s pretty screwed. What is ham radio? The name means nothing to today’s youth, it’s just confusing and they’ll move on to something else. Our attention is so fractioned these days that no one will stick around to find out more, we’re never bored. And you need boredom to get into this type of thing.
What can you do with ham radio? Talk to strangers? You can do that online with milliohms of resistance whereas getting on ham radio is megaohms of resistance in comparison. What I’m saying with this resistance analogy is that ham radio has a big learning curve and friction. You’re competing with the internet, social media, games. Ham radio simply doesn’t have a good hook, it doesn’t have a good incentive.
early_riser@lemmy.radio 1 week ago
Story time: When I was a kid in the late 90s, there was a fad for toy walkie-talkies at my school. I was obsessed with seeing how far I could get my signal, which wasn’t very far given the likely minuscule power.
The teachers decided to capitalize on this trend by inviting a representative of a local ham club to speak at our school. I was absolutely floored when I learned you could talk around the world. Two things kept me from pursuing my license at the time. There was still a code requirement, and nobody for the life of me could tell me what lunch meat had to do with wireless communication.