One of the biggest perks of the time we live in is technology. Older generations say it all the time: look at all that we have! Look at all we can do! We can get information across the nation at a moment’s notice. We can capture any moment in a picture, find any song and look up any piece of information all on the fancy phones that we all have glued to our hands. I, by no means, break any of these stereotypes of my generation. I rarely have my phone more than an arm’s reach away. I am an avid social media user; my Twitter followers know where I am and what I’m doing at any given moment. Most photogenic moments are documented on my Instagram. I have group chats blowing up my phone of various friend groups 24/7. Even my writing is done online and only circulated via social media. I see the looks we get from people our parents age and our grandparents age. The looks of disapproval and disappointment at what kids these days are coming to, living through screens.
As a college student, I am thankful for having the ability to contact people so easily. It makes staying in touch with people quick and simple, and makes following the lives of friends currently living elsewhere possible. However, on more than one occasion, I have been tempted to toss my phone out of a window and not talk to anybody that I wasn’t physically with.
What would it be like to not have the means of that we do? This past summer, I traveled to Alaska. Hopped in a motor home and camped for a week. The Alaskan wilderness doesn’t have the best cell service, and Alaskan campsites are not the glamorous electrically equipped campsites that I had previously experienced. Having limited access to my phone, the Internet, my friends and social media was potentially one of my favorite parts of the trip. I felt as though I really got to experience it. Most of the time, we don’t realize how many minutes a day we spent consumed with looking at our phone screens: at pictures, at texts and tweets. We spend so much time with our eyes down, we miss a lot of what’s going on around us.
I have always loved being able to whip out a device and listen to music everywhere I go. Recently, however, I’ve started wondering if it is such a good thing. I walk around campus and see plenty of people I know, but everyone has headphones in on their walk to class. Don’t get me wrong, I love listening to music at any time as much as the next person, but I never thought of it as impeding to social behaviors. Everybody walks past each other without a word, without a clue as to what is even happening around them because they are hiding behind their headphones and screens.
I do not mean this to rip on young people. I am far, far from innocent with spending too much time on my phone. Sometimes, however, I wish we could lose it all for a while—actually talk to people again. Face to face conversations and written letters. Record players and cameras with film that have to be developed. There’s no surprise, no fun in having absolutely everything we want at our fingertips at all times. While sometimes it is nice, and we definitely take it for granted, I don’t think the older generations give Millennials enough credit; I think if everything we know about living with technology was taken away from us, we just might surprise you.
