Wake up. Check cell phone for texts or missed calls. Look through emails. Log onto Facebook and look at new notifications. Update status on Twitter. As we sit through class, we text our friends to distract ourselves from lessons. We sit at dinner and text and go on Facebook while our friends surround us. Relying on technology has become an accepted part of society today in the 21st century.
I’m not trying to be a hypocrite. Yes, obviously I own a cell phone, and an iPod, a laptop and all those other gadgets most of us own. I do check to see if I have a text at least every five minutes. But I guess I’m just a product of our society. Sometimes I feel so attached to technology that I wish I could live in a cave for a day where no one would know what’s happening every moment of my life, but that’s highly unrealistic.
I hate that technology has given people a wall to hide behind when they want to tell someone how they really feel. Someone pissed you off today at work? Send them a mean Facebook message. You’d never think of talking to them in person, or even talking to them over the phone. Nope. Words written down give a sense on invincibility, and we can say how we really feel without saying it to someone’s face. It’s made the act of confronting someone an ancient practice. Sucks for someone like me that likes to tell people how I feel to their faces. Now I look like the weirdo.
Let’s think for a minute. What did our parents do while they were college kids? How did friends make plans? It may sound crazy, but people actually used to meet where they said they would, and would be there at the time they said they would be there. Technology gives us excuses to go back on our words. It’s perfectly acceptable to text your friend and tell them that you can’t go to dinner with them, fifteen minutes before you were supposed to be at the restaurant.
How important is it to update your Twitter status before every activity of your day? How did this take priority to some people over doing more productive activities, such as homework, or even hanging out with friends? This constant desire to let the world know what you’re doing at any given second is so over my head. I mean, isn’t mystery a little bit interesting, rather than telling everyone the millions of plans that we have?
Now I’m gonna get a little bit deep here, but I think it’s necessary for the little rant that this has become. Shouldn’t we be spending our time in a more memorable way? Think about it. When we look back at memories we have, are we going to remember the text conversations that we had that day, or the more important things, like spending time with people we love? Come on now. Let’s put our phones down for a minute and stop wasting our time with useless status updates.
– Sent from my BlackBerry
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