When I was a little kid I grew up outside riding bikes, camping, helping my parents with the yard work and fishing with my grandfather. The time I spent in front of a television growing up was minimal to none. My family loved spending time with each other outdoors–after all, there is nothing quite like reading a book while being two stories high in a tree.
Every day people around us are losing what roots we have with face-to-face communication. Nowadays, we cannot go a single day without scrolling on social media because–to put it simply–we are addicted. We constantly crave that technological buzz. We are foregoing spending time and making memories together by being glued to our phones.
A professor of mine once said she “would rather see her one-year-old make a mess with her birthday cake through the windows of her eyes, than to catch it through the lens of a camera.”
Her Campus Winthrop staff writer and junior education major, Heather Nobles, said she’s “developing carpel tunnel from being on [her] phone so much and [she] feels like she’s on my phone the least amount of time of all [her] friends”.
Ann McLean, a freshman at Winthrop said, “Technology consumes my life and I choose for it to be that way, but I can survive without it. It is how we connect and share memories with others “.
While technology can save our memories forever, it’s the memories we have in our hearts that will truly last. I am not trying to say that technology is bad, but we abuse it. We are losing touch with our main way of communication and our relationship with nature.
As technology advances, we will be forced to continue to build our lives around it…how else would we transport ourselves to work, school and home? How will we wash our clothes and eat our meals?
What millennials have been primarily using technology for is to avoid the fear of failure and pass the time away. Although at this point, we are professionals at procrastination, wasting time doing nothing but scrolling is always on our to-do list.
Whether it is trying to get out of doing homework or studying, family dinners or letting loose and having fun, we are always using technology. I don’t know about you Collegiettes but I miss the days of silence without technology, and the times that we didn’t have on-going conversations day in and day out via text. I miss being able to draw, drink tea and coffee in peace. I miss reading books, playing board games with friends and practicing yoga.
Find some things to do to help you take a break and step away from technology. After all, every once in a while, we need it.
Collegiettes, take a day to turn your phone off, put away your computer and pick up a book! You won’t regret it, I promise.