In the chap­ter titled “The Face­Time Rev­o­lu­tion,” we fol­low the sto­ry of Kei­th and Car­ol Adams and their son Trevin, who was born deaf on Feb­ru­ary 11, 2005. Despite their ini­tial expec­ta­tions based on genet­ic tests, the cou­ple received the news from a doc­tor that Trevin was deaf. Car­ol expressed lit­tle con­cern, stat­ing, “Don’t wor­ry about it,” while Kei­th affirmed that Trevin’s health was what tru­ly mat­tered to them.

Trevin’s upbring­ing con­trasts sharply with that of his par­ents. While Kei­th and Car­ol faced sig­nif­i­cant com­mu­ni­ca­tion bar­ri­ers when they were young, rely­ing on old meth­ods such as TTY devices to com­mu­ni­cate, Trevin enjoyed a vast­ly dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ence due to tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments. Amer­i­can Sign Lan­guage became the pri­ma­ry mode of com­mu­ni­ca­tion for Trevin, both at home and school. The evo­lu­tion of tech­nol­o­gy around him allowed for near­ly uni­ver­sal cap­tion­ing on tele­vi­sion and var­i­ous devices, includ­ing mobile phones that facil­i­tat­ed instant com­mu­ni­ca­tion through tex­ting and Face­Time.

By the time Trevin played foot­ball at the Cal­i­for­nia School for the Deaf, River­side (CSDR), he had access to tools that bridged com­mu­ni­ca­tion gaps, allow­ing him to inter­act seam­less­ly with both deaf and hear­ing peers. The influ­ence of the iPhone, intro­duced by Steve Jobs in 2007, mark­ing a rev­o­lu­tion for the deaf com­mu­ni­ty, mak­ing pre­vi­ous com­mu­ni­ca­tion meth­ods appear anti­quat­ed.

The chap­ter empha­sizes gen­er­a­tional con­trasts, illus­trat­ed by Trevin’s expe­ri­ences against those of Ken Wat­son, a coach born in 1952 who faced iso­la­tion and lim­it­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tion dur­ing his youth. His sum­mers were lone­ly, rely­ing on let­ters to con­nect with friends, where­as Trevin main­tains con­stant com­mu­ni­ca­tion with fam­i­ly and friends through smart devices.

Car­ol express­es typ­i­cal parental con­cerns about tech­nol­o­gy’s impact, not­ing the risks of screen addic­tion but ulti­mate­ly appre­ci­at­ing the broad­er access her chil­dren expe­ri­ence com­pared to her own child­hood. She acknowl­edges both the pit­falls and the sig­nif­i­cant advan­tages that con­tem­po­rary tech­nol­o­gy has afford­ed Trevin and his sib­lings, remark­ing, “The access for the kids is amaz­ing.” Over­all, the chap­ter encap­su­lates the trans­for­ma­tive impact of tech­nol­o­gy on com­mu­ni­ca­tion with­in the deaf com­mu­ni­ty.