In the past few years, I have seen so many anti-social media posts go viral—on social media. If that's not a picture of irony, what is? I mean, the most liked slam poetry videos speak hatred for people that thirst for likes. This makes no sense.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for boundaries. I wouldn't take my phone out to check the likes on my latest (and awesome) selfie during an interview. I wouldn't reply to work-related e-mails while with family. And I certainly wouldn't let my eyes be glued to my phone while with my significant other. But that's all because I'm a commonly courteous human being.
It's not because I'm against technology or because I'm hyper-pro in-person interaction. I cannot stand when out-of-touch (I won't say older because I know some of our grandparents are on Instagram) people assume I'm taking a picture of my sandwich to post on Facebook...it's obviously for Snapchat. And so what if it is?! This is the day and age we live in.
No one was complaining when cars were first invented and people stopped walking as much. Or when kitchen appliances were invented and people stopped cooking as slowly. Or when newspapers were first distributed and that stopped some word-of-mouth. So why complain when apps like Uber and GrubHub and Apple News make these same activities even more simple?
It's because people hate this Age of Information. People are constantly associating millennials with negative qualities like narcissism, laziness, and introversion. When in reality, we are the most informed, opinionated, and innovative generation to date.
Yes, we have front-facing cameras. Yes, we have one social media platform to post photos, one to post statuses, one for self-expiring media, one for job searching, and one for a little of everything. Yes, we can spend thousands of dollars while lying in bed. And yes, we meet people online.
But to say that makes us lazy or narcissistic or increasingly alone and depressed? That just displays an outright fear of change.
So when my friends ask me if I will let my future kids have iPads instead of Play-Doh, I wonder—why can't they just have both? To let any person be deprived of this Age of Information we live in is to keep them misinformed. To tear them down for thriving in rapid, real-time knowledge and experiences at their fingertips is to set them back tremendously. We have to keep up with the times and we have to stop letting people bash us for doing so.
