My generation has grown up in one of the most technologically dependent eras to date. It started with things like MSN, AOL, and Yahoo! Instant Messenger. We could connect instantly with our friends to tell them about how interesting our day of school was in middle school. We had awesome screen names like ***~AmBeR<3~*** to show how artistic we were, and we used song quotes in our statuses that made us sound so deep, such as "Whatever tomorrow brings I'll be there." It gives me shivers just thinking about it. How cool you were was almost synonymous with how well you designed your Myspace page and the amount of friends you had.
Slowly we migrated to having cell phones. Flip phones were all the rage, and if you had a Motorola Razr, you were the bee’s knees. After the coolness of the Razr wore off, the next big thing was a phone with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. It revolutionized the texting world, and everyone’s thumbs were flying in approval. From this, texting competitions were born, and we took another step towards being constantly connected to everyone we knew. Then, the biggest thing since sliced bread came to be: smartphones. Smartphones revolutionized not only how we text, or how we communicate from a technological standpoint, but it also changed how we communicate in person.
Next time you are at a restaurant, just take a moment to observe the people around you. Chances are, you will see people on their smart phones paying attention to just about everything but the ones they are with. The wide availability of smartphones put social media at our fingertips, meaning that we could be in touch with every person we know instantly and all in one place with very little effort. For a while, it was great! But now there is trouble in paradise as we see the common issue of people looking down more than they are looking up.
We have become obsessed with capturing the moment with our smartphones, and admiring the beauty of our surroundings through pixels rather than through our own retinas. We document every part of our lives on platforms such as Snapchat and Instagram, because if no one sees it, did it even happen? Believe me, I’m one of the worst offenders of this. I am constantly checking my phone, I consistently have a thirty-second Snap story, and I text so often I actually experience “the phantom buzz” where you feel like your phone is going off but in reality you’re just crazy.
So why? Why is our culture so infatuated with being connected to everyone all the time? Why don’t we look at the world as it was intended, through our eyes, just experiencing everything and being consumed by it instead of documenting it and letting the documentation consume us? Why do we put an emphasis on how many likes we receive rather than how many people actually genuinely like us? Why do we ignore those who took the time to physically be in our presence for those who are present in our social media? Why?
Personally, I’m going to try to make an effort to change. Here are a few suggestions if you would like to do the same.
1. Observe the world around you without viewing it through a screen, because the world is much more beautiful when it isn’t made of tiny little boxes.
2. Try not to be on your phone (unless you absolutely have to be) in the company of others.
3. Maybe don’t update your status every single day, or tweet every aspect of your life.
It’s going to be an adjustment, but I’m willing to give it a shot, experience the world, and focus on relationships with people in person.
