Dear fellow phone addicts,
Put it down for just a minute. Take a moment to look at your surroundings. Look at the fall foliage and feel the cool breeze blowing over you. Now stop and think.
What good does constantly scrolling through your twitter feed do on a beautiful day like today? How appreciative can you be of the world when you’re too busy catching up on your 2,000 Facebook “friends’” updated statuses? Have you had any face-to-face quality conversations today? Or were your eyes glued to the screen as you passed by a nice stranger who tried to smile at you on your walk to class?
When was the last time you were asked out on a date? Was it via a short text message or did someone work up the courage to step out from behind the screen and simply say, “Want to grab coffee sometime?”
The last time you were texting the person you liked, did you stress over the fact that he or she didn’t text you back quick enough? Did you worry about the way you worded the message, with maybe a few too many emojis, or not enough? Did you put more time into choosing which filter would make you look best on the Snapchat you were sending to your crush than you spent wondering whether or not you two would ever go on an actual date?
How about spending quality time with your family? Do you all sit in the same room together, but sit quietly on your phones? Physically being together, but all mentally being apart deep within the wide worlds of social media doesn’t exactly count as time well spent.
What about the children of today’s generation? I’ll bet that you know someone under the age of ten who is planning on asking for the latest iPhone this Christmas. Will these kids ever learn how to appropriately interact with people in a real-life situation? Will they be able to handle spontaneous, face-to-face small talk brought on by the nice little boy, without a smartphone, who decided to sit next to them on the school bus that morning? What happened to coloring and riding bikes as a pastime?
Do you take photographs to remember all the fun times you had with your friends and all the memories you made? Or do you take photographs to get “likes” on your latest Instagram and Facebook posts? Do you have a stronger desire to share what you’re doing each second of the day with your 500 plus “friends” on social media that you hardly know? Or do you choose to be present in what you’re doing with people you truly care about without capturing all of it on your Snapchat Story?
If you don’t want to make eye contact with someone to avoid the inevitable “awkward” moments, do you stare at the screen of your phone until the moment passes? When you don’t want to engage in a conversation, do you pull out your phone and use it as an escape route?
Technology, social media, and all the different ways we can communicate with one another are amazing advances in our society. But, if we aren’t careful, these advances can quickly turn into setbacks. Slowly, we will lose the importance of relationships, and be more concerned with how many followers we have on Twitter. We will lose the ability to socialize, but gain the ability to send the perfect text. We will lose interest in all the things the world has to offer, and focus only on the rumors spread around the Internet though social media. Dating will no longer have the same meaning. Childhood memories will all be captured and saved in the “Cloud,” instead of in our hearts. Our phones and social media accounts will continue to consume us, until it is all that we are, and all that we care about.
So, fellow phone addicts, answer these questions, and answer them honestly. Then, ask yourself whether or not you could benefit from a little less quality time with your phone, and a little more quality time with the people in your life that are important to you.
Technology will always exist from this day forward. People? Well, we do not live forever. All the time you spend with your smartphone is hours lost that you will never get back. That time is time that you could have spent making memories that will last a lifetime. Being so absorbed in a screen is not healthy for our mental, physical, or emotional well-being.
Put it down for just a minute. Take a moment to appreciate your surroundings. Look at the fall foliage and feel the cool breeze. Now, look up from the screen in your hand and be present and active with all that you do today.
