Ah, the digital age, how break-neck fast paced you are. There is some way to get pretty much anything quickly now. Want TV? Binge watch on Netflix! Want an item? Buy it on Amazon, better yet, get expedited shipping! Music on your mind? Youtube it or download Spotify! What a time to be alive… right? This lack of having to wait for things should make people more happy, right? Perhaps not…

All this speed has allowed our world to move at an overall pace that history has never seen before. All this has caused a loss of a crucial skill, patience. Unfortunately, we’ve become accustomed to having things quite fast because of the commodities at our finger tips. We’ve found an easier life because of all of this but should anything take any longer that we’re used to, we become impatient. The problem is the span between starting something and becoming impatient has become much shorter than previous generations. As a result of not having patience learned, we find difficulty when dealing with very long, arduous, slow moving processes.

Relationships are very often affected. People who’ve spent very little time together assume they’re friends, despite little testing. The rush of lust or sexual energy may be confused with love. This results in disillusioned lovers, broken trust, and a tendency towards isolationism should a “friend” not be what you expect. The ingrown impatience can lead to misplaced trust because we so eagerly want friends, a relationship and a general sense of belonging. This is only one example of how this lack of patience affects people, but this is such a problem because it is a big blow to self-esteem and confidence. This shows it shows itself in stats. Surveys have shown that marriages have dropped nearly 3% in only 15 years. Depression rate has risen from 8.7 to 11.3% amongst teens, and worse of all, the suicide rate has risen from 10% to 13% in the last decade. These alarming stats may have something to do with this kind of societal impatience that’s growing.

The scariest part of this is the division of ages. My age demographic is showing these stats and that’s a group that when young lived without many of the things that are so necessary now. How are the babies being born today going to deal with these things 16 years down the road?This is all they’ll ever know, so how will they learn to manage the effect technology has on their lives? We need to explore these points and realize how this shift in technology and it’s speed is affecting us.