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Paul Kiser

Daylight Saving Time ends this weekend (‘fall back’ at 2:00 AM this Sunday) and the man who reaches for his wristwatch to set it for Standard Time is likely to be over 40…or 50…or 60.

With the invention of the cell phone, the need for the wristwatch has become a piece of a 107 year-old technology that young men often see as unnecessary and outdated. For the cell phone dependent male, time is as close as the phone display and it is always accurate and updates itself when the user changes time zones, or time changes to and from Daylight Saving Time.

A Sign of the "Time"

Mike, who is under 40 and doesn’t own a wristwatch, states:

…only time it’s “cool” is if you are dressing fancy and need to be a little more classy than checking your phone for the time…

James, who is over 40, says:

Most of my life I preferred pocket watches but since I started running/biking I needed a stopwatch function…

A man who wears a watch is noticed by the opposite sex.  Kayla, who is under 40, may have expressed the sentiment of many women when she said:

I like the look of wristwatches on men, but they are becoming a bit outdated….

Kayla goes on to say that she has seen men who are wearing a watch pull out their cell phone to check the time rather than look at their wrist, which supports the theory that wristwatches are more for fashion than function.

In a bar in Golden, Colorado, four young men sitting together were asked if they wore a wristwatch and all said “no.” When asked why, they indicated that their cell phone was their time piece of choice. At the same bar, two men who were over 40 and wearing wristwatches were discussing an expensive Rolex model that one of them hoped to buy. The value of wristwatches seems to clearly be correlated to the age of the man.

Perhaps those who became reliant on wristwatches before there were cellphones continue to be attached to the idea of a wristwatch even though technology has made them obsolete. Whatever the reason, a wristwatch seems to become a generational indicator as well as a time keeper.

This article first published as
Wristwatches Tell Age As Well As Time
on Technorati.com