With these words, the poet in this video summed up a frightening trend emerging with my generation. Just last weekend, while I was hanging out with friends, I looked around and realized that seven of the ten people in the room were fixated on their phones. I see the growing amount of technology being used in the classroom, with the middle school kids being given Ipads, and I remember overhearing one mother tell her son that he needed to read for an hour to be able to use his Ipad that night. When did spending hours on technology start being a prize? I know young children who will not eat a meal without a screen in front of them. I am in no way saying that I am exempt from this trend. Ironically, I found this video mindlessly scrolling through Facebook while texting a friend, all by myself in my bedroom. More times than I'd like to admit, I use my phone as a way to kill time, which I don't have enough of anyway. Overall, I think that we are becoming too dependent on technology to bridge the gap between us and other people.
Talking to people can be awkward, especially if they are strangers. I think a lot of these social medias feed off that fact. It is a lot easier to message someone than walk up to them and talk. When messaging someone you can go back and take the time to say exactly what you want to say. When speaking you can't do that. People feel safer when they can create who they want themselves to be. For example, I could start a Twitter account right now and say whatever I wanted to. I could post pictures of fantastic trips I never actually went on and beautiful people I don't actually know. Everyone else who saw my profile would think I was a guy who had beautiful friends and traveled the world all the time. This ability to perfect our online lives takes away the imperfections of real life; and creates an impossible standard for people. These imperfections in real life, however, make real life real. They show that everybody makes mistakes, and knowing that is comforting and allows other people to try new things and not be so afraid about messing up. I believe that as our online culture grows, our ability to take calculated risks and try new things will also suffer. People could start doing things just so they can post them and get retweets and likes.
A counter argument:
In the past, every new generation has been accused of being worse than their predecessors in some way. I think that my generation will turn out okay. We will undoubtedly be very different from our parents, but they were also different from their parents, and so on ad infinitum. Granted our difference might be larger in magnitude than our parents due to technology, we will be okay. Someday we will be the ones accusing our children of being unable to take on the responsibilities of being adults. My point in all of this is just take this with a grain of salt.
