There we are, eating our 12:15 lunch (more like 12:25 by the time we’re all settled with our food) in Lower Kimball, a subset of the main dining hall. We’re sitting at one of those high tops, our legs dangling off the tall bar stools, and we’re idly chatting about classes and daily routines. I value my best friends at school for a multitude of reasons: their uncanny ability to make me laugh, their sheer honesty when they tell me that I’m being 'parannoying' (the hybrid between paranoid, and being annoying about how paranoid I am) and their trusting and kind natures. Perhaps one of my favorite things about my friends is that when we’re all together, our conversations incorporate a wide range of topics besides the usual small talk. It’s a gift to be able to agree, disagree, and debate, to exercise the mind, and to forever improve and shape our opinions.
Somehow, through a series of tangents, we recently arrived at the conversation of technology, and more specifically, how it seems our age (the 1995-1996 babies) was the cut off for life before the endless array of technology. Sure, we had our TV shows, and the Gameboy that evolved into Nintendo DS, but likewise we had cops and robbers, manhunt, and street hockey. We played house, built forts, explored, and played outside until we were called in for dinner. In the modern day world of technology, I consistently see kids sitting, playing on their iPads, or playing video games for hours. I see toddlers out to dinner with their family, and instead of participating in the conversation, they are playing with an iPad. When I was little, my parents would talk to me and teach me how to behave in a restaurant. There was no technology handed to me to simply keep me quiet for an hour. The light of the screen illuminates their little faces, as they continue to be oblivious to the conversations occurring around them.
Throughout our conversation we couldn’t help but note the positives of technology, as there is something to be said for technological advances: they promote communication, education, and further development in a plethora of ways. However, as my friend Jane mentioned, “We are like zombies, all staring at our phones without noticing it.” I couldn’t help but agree with her, as I scrolled through Facebook on mine. To what extent do the negatives outweigh the positives? If this is the new norm, then what will be the norm in 2025? It goes without saying that extreme exposure to technology can ruin communication in real time. Don’t agree? Just imagine saying that angry text you sent to your mother face-to-face. We gain power behind the shield of technology: just look at the many instances of cyber-bullying. “When we were young,” my mom once said, “the bullying stopped at the end of the school day. But now, it follows these kids home.” This isn’t to say that bullying has ever been an acceptable practice; but there is something to be said about the extensive reach it has now thanks to technology. I used to be angry at my mother for not letting me have an AIM, but now I see that she was just trying to protect me.
If my mother was trying to protect me from AIM, what in the hell will I be trying to protect my children from? All of this new technology evolved in a matter of decades. I remember sharing a bedroom with my sister during the summertime. With eight years between us, we were living in different times. The biggest form of technology that evolved within her teenage years was the flip phone and AIM. I remember being jealous of the blue landline phone in her room, which she would constantly call her friends on. My sister and my brothers lived through the era of calling the house phones of their significant others. Nowadays, we could date someone for years and never once have to call their house phone. Ten years later, when I was 16, I was no longer jealous of a landline, as I was too busy playing with my first iPhone.
As our lunch began to wind down — Kate had to make her 1 p.m. Latin class, and Jane and I were late for our very important appointments with our beds and Netflix — we came to a conclusion: we’re horrified at what the future of technology could be. While, yes, technology is a hugely beneficial to our society, it also has its downsides. Though it will be many years until I have children of my own, I can’t help but wonder, if we’ve come this far in a matter of decades, how far will we go until it simply becomes too much? Until then, let’s all take a minute to put down our cellphones, laptops, and tablets, and enjoy life in its simplest form: actual conversation.
