Digital natives are the average of the five websites they spend the most time on. We aren’t children of our own parents as much as we are children of the Internet: brought up on memes, taught life through Wikipedia, understood by Tumblr quotes. Whether consciously or not, we are hugely influenced by the information we absorb from the Wide Web.
In fact, we are the information we absorb from the Wide Web, constantly updated and recompiled.
What would have become of us if we hadn't gotten processed at the factory of the Digital Era, disemboweled of our original personalities and stuffed with web content? I don’t have an answer. Did you try Googling it? This very question is at the heart of our 99 problems.
Since the intrusion of the Internet into our lives, we count on it to guide us through everyday life trivia. As long as we have a connection, nothing can shake us. But once the “no signal” sign appears in the upper left corner of our phone screen, our hands become sweaty and our thoughts entangled.
We ceaselessly inquire Internet about how we must strive to be and what attitude to stick to, both on social media and in real life, in order to enhance the impression that we meet social expectations of an ideal person effortlessly and authentically. No wonder our search history is littered with "how to appear more confident / masculine / feminine / attractive / intelligent / friendly / approachable.” We consult WikiHow with our most intimate concerns instead of entrusting them to our family and leaf through lifestyle magazines in hope to stumble upon the recipe of happiness.
We hardly generate our own ideas anymore. We don’t even hate Justin Bieber wholeheartedly but because this is what we ought to do. Having come into this world with an empty bookcase of a brain, we progressively filled its shelves with ready-made opinions and ideas and classified them by categories, such as "Success", "Relationships", or "Politics". The very concept of intellectual exchange has lost its sense, for Google allows each of us an equal potential of an encyclopedia.
Doctors failed to diagnose us with distortion of priorities: we don’t exist for ourselves but for and through the eyes of others, whose validation measures our worth. Don’t frown and pretend you don’t know what I'm talking about. Picture the situation where you find yourself alone in a confined public space, such as a café or an elevator.
You feel perfectly fine until a group of people appears within the limit of your comfort zone. “What if they think I’m a loner?” The solution comes to you in a blink of an eye. You take out your phone and start fidgeting with it as if you had received notifications.
And yet, modern youth stoically pursues their chimerical dream to be original and acts as if criticism couldn't reach them. We find it necessary to update our Twitter followers on the matter of our lunch menu and don’t wait for recognition to build an altar dedicated to self-cult on Instagram. We aspire to influence. When elders stare at us in misunderstanding, we attribute it to our progressiveness. Although we think we glide on top of the wave, what we really are is the sand being dragged along.
You’ll ask: “Then, what is there to improve?” — Well, have you tried Googling it?
