How many times have you been with your group of friends and you notice that everyone is using their phone? I know I have, and I’ve been one of the people always using my phone. Recently I’ve been trying to stop using my phone when I am with my friends, if I am with them its because I want to spend time with them, not my phone. Little by little I have encouraged my friends to do the same. I know it’s hard, we can’t live without our phones, but if you have the opportunity to be with your friends enjoy it! Think about it, when you are in College you only see these friends for what, 8 month a year right? For only 4 years! Unless they are older than you or younger so you have less time with them. Then you go home for the summer and winter break and you see your friends from back home what? 4 month? That’s it if they are spending the whole summer back home, or not traveling during winter break. I’ve had friends that I haven’t seen since High School graduation and I am a sophomore, but when I got to see them during Spring Break, we put our phones beside and actually had a conversation. Its not the same to talk to someone on the phone, than in person.
Do you remember when we were kids? We didn’t have phones, iPad’s or any technology; the most that we had was the original GameBoy, but still we would spend our time playing outside. Why can’t we do that now? Have a normal conversation with someone without using our phones? Technology has taken over our world, we are the technology generation. We can’t survive without the Internet when we are writing a paper for a class, while our parents use to go to the library and read millions of books until they found the correct information. Parents don’t know how to entertain their kids without technology! Even coloring books are available in the App Store. Its simply easier to carry an iPad to entertain the kid than a bag with different coloring books or toys.
Our lives revolve around Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and so on. Every time we eat something we publish it in Instagram (#foodporn), we go somewhere we tag the location in Facebook. We call them social media, but how exactly are they social? We are so involved in them that we actually don’t socialize. We lock ourselves in our rooms and communicate with other through technology instead of face to face. Now we don’t group meetings to plan things or communicate things, we just do group text. No emotions are shown, only words. I understand that technology is great if you want to talk to someone who is not in the same city as you, but we came to college to meet new people. Experiment, here in college no one will judge you for what you do, so one day just go up to someone and talk to them and get to know them, you never know, you could become great friends.
The next time you are with friends do one of this things to encourage one another to put the phone down and talk:
- If you are at a restaurant or a bar, put all the phones at the center of the table on vibrate phasing down. Whoever touches their phone first has to pay the bill. I will assure you that no one will touch the phone.
- If you are at a party with your friends and its somewhere you trust, hide the phones in a drawer and whoever touches their phone has to take a shot. Maybe they’ll touch it once or twice but after a few shots they will stop.
- If you are not eating or drinking, simply make it a game.
I encourage you to watch this video. It’s a really good video that talks about the same topic. Something that impacted me was when he says that we are a “generation of idiots, smart phones and dumb people. ”