It is a common occurrence in a young adult’s life to hear sentences like “you shouldn’t be on your phone all the time” or “go out and experience the real world instead of staring at your phone”. Mostly, these statements come from our parents or grandparents who cannot understand how important phones and computers have become in our day and age. For them, it seems easy to unplug because they spent most of their lives untouched by technology. For our generation, however, the case is different.
Have you ever tried to imagine life without technology? Just picture yourself without access to phones, computers or the internet. No more going on Learn to download lecture slides or listen to lecture recordings. No way of knowing when societies meet up. Writing every essay or lab report by hand. No electronic access to library books and having to get physical copies. Even outside of the student bubble, life without technology would be harder. For example, it would be extremely difficult to find jobs or apply for them outside of your hometown. Meeting up with friends would prove to be rather awkward as you would have to go to their houses to see if they have time to spare. In short, we would have to drastically change the way we live as technology makes our lives easier.
If that is not enough to prove that technology is crucial in our lives, let us come back to the argument that it is a massive waste of time. While most of us admittedly do spend a lot of time on social media, it has to be said that social media is just one form of how we use technology. The fact that we seemingly spend hours scrolling through our phones does not take away from the argument that technology is crucial in our lives as you cannot make the mistake to equate social media with all of technology. Besides, there are ways in which you can limit how much time you spend on your phone. Ironically, apps like ‘Forest’ help you stay focused on your work and be productive during the day.
Furthermore, when our parents are talking about the importance of “experiencing the real world”, it is also important to acknowledge that for some people, technology serves as a break from reality where they can escape from whatever is making them feel down. One way of doing so is to keep in touch with friends and family. Surely, there is nothing wrong with video-calling your parents when you feel homesick or letting your friends know how your day was via social media.
Taking all of this into consideration, we should conclude that technology is of vital importance in how we live our lives. Instead of focusing on the few negatives that our parents never fail to bring up we should embrace the positives and use our knowledge of it to our advantage. After all, we are the generation that grew up with technology.
Image: tec_estromberg via Flickr