Almost every summer, I visit my home country to spend two full months with my family. We gather together after lunch or dinner to play cards and socialize. This summer, I visited my family as usual but a tragedy had occurred – they were infected. I asked my aunt to play and she looked up from her new Nexus 5 and told me that she downloaded the app for a card game which is “so much more fun.” I went to my uncle to try my luck, and he said he wanted to take a nap. I never thought the meaning of a ‘nap’ meant lying in bed with his phone glued to his hands. My baby cousin, who’s about four, visits me every Thursday and brings the vicious, brainwashing creature along with her – also known as, The iPad.
The purpose of technology is to make our lives simpler and more practical. But we have passed that purpose. The companies and industries who push themselves over the limit in order to create a fancier device are not sweating over the purpose of ‘making our lives simpler and more practical.’ They simply want to hear the cha-ching sound of cash registers.
Don’t get me wrong! All this modern tech has helped us find a viable planet to escape to in the [hopefully not a near] future. They have helped us create machinery that consumes energy efficiently, and has made communication much quicker and efficient.
But it has also brainwashed the new generation.
We don’t hop on horses or gather eggs in the farm anymore. If there was suddenly no internet, computers, or iPhones, would we run out of things to do to fill up our time? The grid is crowded with toddlers and their tablets; we need to put our phones aside and get out more to soak up some of that Vitamin D [the pills don’t count!].
Here are some of my recommendations to de-bug ourselves and get the most out of real life:
– Turn off that phone during get-togethers
– Monkey see, monkey do. The more you use your electronics, the more children around you will want one too
– Relax, you don’t need the latest laptop or phone. If it’s turning on, it’s working!
– Create a borderline between work time and private time. Turn off your connection to the grid during your private time. We all need a few hours to turn off the system and have an actual social life talking with actual human beings in person.
Overall, we don’t need to get vaccinated to prevent the bite of tech, we just need to treat tech with cautious.