Neil Degrasse Tyson once told me that the late great Library of Alexandria didn’t have nearly as many or as great books as our phones can hold.
“You know Neil Degrasse Tyson, Emma?!” No. I wish. But I do have a Netflix account and have been watching Cosmos a good bit recently. That’s when my buddy Neil divulged this not at all shocking, yet thought provoking revelation to me.
If what Neil says is true, which it is, I mean he’s Neil Degrasse Tyson for Pete’s sake, he only speaks the truth, then why aren’t we always looking at our phones reading from the infinite mass of literature there is in the internet world?
Before I start berating my generation, I’m going to go ahead and apologize in advance about this article being more of a rant from a nineteen year old who has no room to talk or gripe about everything their generation does wrong when I am guilty of doing the exact things I am going to complain about. I’m too young, yet just cynical enough, to be looking so poorly at the future of this nation, yet I’m doing it.
Let’s start with the news. The only people that watch or read the news are the older generations. Not mine. Ask anyone under the age of 25 to name all the Kardashians and they can. Ask them to name who the secretary of state is and they can’t. (It’s John Kerry, by the way. And I will not answer if I had to google that or not…) There is no excuse for us not to know this information. With literally every known fact, thought, myth, mystery, and detail ready to read on that magical little electronic rectangle in our pockets, what is our excuse for not reading just three news articles a day? What is our excuse for being a part of the uninformed, malignant mass? Well? You’re right. We have no excuse.
Even news videos on YouTube are less watched. Many of these people are comedians making videos about current news, informing the public in a genuinely entertaining, funny way, yet when they do one video about Justin Bieber, a Jenner, or some other celebrity, they get three times as many views as any other actual news video. Why is it so much harder to watch a video about politics, race wars, religious wars, the economy, etc. then it is to watch a video about what celebrity just got a new tattoo? If someone has the answer, please tell me.
Now, onto phones in general. How come whenever we have to leave our phone somewhere not on our immediate person, we act like someone going through drug withdrawals? We feel anxious, nervous, phantom vibrations, hear phantom alert sounds, and experience nervous scratching. Why is it that when our phone dies and we have no way to charge it we feel like our soul is slowly dying and escaping us? Too far? Probably. Point is, Generation Z relies too heavily on their phones. We can’t stop texting people we wouldn’t even talk to face to face for five minutes. We have to constantly check our Instagram’s, Twitter’s, Facebook’s, Tumblr’s, Snapchat’s all that jazz. We forget about the reality around us and focus on the virtual reality we create in our grubby hands. We can’t go on a hike, for example, and experience the beauty and wonder that is Mother Nature without Instagramming and Snapchatting it to “prove it happened.” (I assume that’s the reason for posting the pictures for the world to see, if it’s not then I’m at a loss for an explanation.) Put down your stupid phone, better yet, leave it somewhere, look around the non-pixelated nature around you, and experience the marvel that is our earth. Revel in your insignificance compared to this huge world. Your Instagram isn’t that important to anyone but you.
Because I am one of the future English teachers of America, let’s look at this from a literary standpoint. Our phone scan hold every classical literary work from Chaucer to Frost, from the lesser known works of Frank Yerby to the well-known J. R. R. Tolkien. Yet we would rather text, watch stupid cat videos, and update our Tinder profiles then educate ourselves with these fantastic pieces of human creation. It’s so sad, y’all. We could all be so well-read; imagine the discussions you could hear from fifteen year olds on the street that just read the works of Bronte. That’s a world I want to live in! But no. You only hear teens talking about which celebrity is hotter or which video games are coming out.
Take this as a challenge. Use that device that I’m sure is no more than a few inches from you, if it’s not in your hand already, for good, not evil. Educate yourself on local news, world news, facts about the political and economic systems of the world, read a novel that you were supposed to read in high school because it was a classic. Broaden your mind!
Alright. I’m done. I’ll step off my soap box. But seriously, if anyone knows why people take Instagram pictures of where they are and what they’re doing, let me know.
