Tags
adventure, beach, cellphones, change, communicating, communication, evolving, experience, facebook, fun, instagram, iphone, jeremy glass, life, phone, pictures, technology
“We can’t jump off bridges anymore because our iPhones will get ruined. We can’t take skinny dips in the ocean because there’s no service on the beach and adventures aren’t real unless they’re on Instagram. Technology has doomed the spontaneity of adventure and we’re helping destroy it every time we Google, check-in, and hashtag.”
For the longest time after I read this quote, I agreed with Jeremy. I mean, everywhere you looked, there was someone on their phone. It’s everywhere. Inescapably true. Facebook has become a breeding ground for everyone knowing everyone else’s business. You don’t even have to try hard to know what Sally from high school is doing now. It’s there.
But why does that frustrate people so much? It is that person’s choice to share the details of their life through social networking. That’s what it is there for, to share what is happening with your life and for others to see it. There are security settings so you can pick and choose who does see all that information. It’s their choice to let you into the business of their lives. You find it annoying? Delete them. Or if you are more than just acquaintances and feel weird about deleting them, there’s this nifty thing called ‘hiding’ them. You can be their friend and not see anything they post come up on your feed. You’d have to search their name to find anything out.
People don’t think ‘the young people’ can truly enjoy the company of others and the spontaneity of life simply because they instagram everything? So they want to document their adventures so years from now they can look back and remember. Sometimes wonder why they decided the picture of the food was so important, but still, they can look back and have the help of the pictures bring back all those memories. Why is that a bad thing? Even if I have a phone and text, that doesn’t take away from the fact that I enjoy the company of my friends. I am hanging out with them, watching a movie, cooking supper, talking intimately with them, joking and laughing about the days absurdities. So I text a friend who I can’t see whenever I want to finish a conversation I’m having with them?
If someone really wants to go to the beach, whether they get service there or not, they are going to go. They might leave later to find a place with service, but they can still enjoy the beach. And don’t go telling me that people don’t skinny dip or do crazy things they’ll look back on when they are 50 and shake their heads at. Cellphones aren’t keeping people from doing it. They’re just helping people coordinate the times, the place, the people involved, and probably the evidence that such a thing happened. And where’s the harm in that? Where’s the harm in having the evidence of having fun so when you’re older and your memory is failing you can look back and remember those times again like you were there.
Unless, of course, you’re documenting a murder or something illegal, in which case, to each their own, but there is going to be some consequences with that.
“Talking on the phone is so much more personal!” Maybe to you. But not to everyone. If the two people involved has determined texting to be their medium of communication, why is it your right to judge them on what is personal or not? What right do you have to judge them on something they have both come to a mutual agreement upon? Maybe talking on the phone is too personal for some people, or with different schedules and time zones, texting is the only way to actually communicate with each other.
Why is it a bad thing to change with the times and to evolve with the technology that is so rapidly moving forward?
Doing so doesn’t make what we feel and experience any less real than those 40 years ago, just makes the experiences different.