I absolutely loved this post. It addresses a lot of the complex feelings I have toward technology. I love my phone, and I think it’s amazing that I can find the answer to any question no matter where I am or that I can play Candy Crush while I wait in the Dr. office’s waiting room for an hour, but I also have a nostalgic part of me that’s so very sad about these “mass extinctions”. My feelings on the subject are torn.
On one hand… When I was in high school, there was no Wikipedia. We did it the old school way–encyclopedias! It makes me glad that I waited so many years to go to college. It’s MUCH easier to research when you’ve got any given reference at your fingertips. The convenience factor is huge. And yeah, I’ve enjoyed my share of video games, social media sites, and come on… online shopping is amazing.
However, at the same time, I get really sad when I think about it. When I was younger, my friends and I would play store, school, house, or go out and ride bikes. We scraped our knees, got in trouble for staying out past dinner, and I read A LOT.
It really upsets me to talk to kids who’ve literally never ridden a bike or who can tell you more about Spongebob than their friends from school. My best friends were from my neighborhood, and that was because we actually spent time outside, and I met them there. We would have sleepovers and tell ghost stories or give each other make-overs instead of signing onto XBox live and talking to each other through headsets from our own homes or inviting someone over only to spend the entire time staring at separate screens.
So while I will admit the technological boom has it’s advantages and has made many of life’s burdens much more simple, I feel like it’s killing a part of our culture. When was the last time you watched a kid catch lightening bugs? Sure, we’re able to meet and talk to people who are halfway across the world, people we never would have had a chance to meet without the internet, but we aren’t even really talking to our families or the people sitting right next to us half the time.
I understand the irony of posting this on a blog. Ha! Yes, yes, I know. But, I can’t just abstain from mourning these beloved past times. I would be extremely grateful for my cell phone or OnStar if I were stranded somewhere, but is it too much to miss some of the old ways? When people were actually social… not just connected through social media?
Unfortunately, I am not a parent yet… but when I am, I really hope I’m able to have the time to take my kids outside and raise them to have an appreciation for life on both sides of the screen.
-DW
Where have all the kids gone? It’s been eons since I’ve seen a snowman on a front lawn.
When I was a kid, there was an entire clan of snowmen in my front yard from November until April. (Yes, we had lonnnggg winters. That’s life, when you live in Sudbury. When we stood at our living room window, we couldn’t see anything but snow banks. It was almost summer vacation before the rest of the street materialized once again.)
Recently, I drove through my neighborhood the day after a big honkin’ snowstorm and I did not see one snowman. I didn’t even see any kids. Now, I know that scientists claim we’re in the midst of a whole whack of mass extinctions, but I’m pretty sure that kids aren’t one of the species on the list (though snowmen seem to be).
The modern decline in snowmen really concerns me, and after…
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The Dysfunctional Writer 