Technology And The Modern Relationship
I remember how I felt when I got a postcard from my best friend in 3rd grade. She was in London at the time and I’d missed her terribly at school. Back then, there was no such thing as texting or Facebook, just patiently waiting by the phone and constantly checking the mailbox at the end of your street. When that postcard came, I remember feeling absolutely elated seeing her handwriting and reading about her adventures. Nothing will ever replace the feeling of getting a handwritten letter from someone you love, especially nowadays since the chances of anyone taking the time to write an actual letter, buy a book of stamps and send it in the mail is so rare. The idea if a “pen pal” is long deceased in …show more content…
I remember imaginatively playing in the backyard with my older brother for hours, never wanting to come inside the house. I remember the nerves of calling a friend and worrying about one of the parents picking up the phone, then spending the entire call wondering if anyone was listening in on another line. I remember board game nights and ping pong matches and dancing to the handheld radio at midnight when our power went out one winter. No worries about who “liked” your photo online because photos were something keepsake of your own, not for anyone else. Nothing to distract you from long conversations with friends. No pressure to live up to your “online persona” because that didn’t exist and you were you. I miss these times and I feel like we are so engulfed in our online life that we don’t get to enjoy our real one and the people in it. Technology is in incredibly useful tool but I feel like it takes up way too much of our lives and …show more content…
In the back of your mind, you’re most likely worrying about the notifications and text messages you’re missing out on. We seem to have forgotten how to live unplugged. The internet has been proven to rewire our brains into having a much shorter attention span and lower cognitive ability. The ability to access all the world’s information at the click of a button or the swipe of a screen makes people less inclined to want to retain that information in their own brain, thus relying less on their own brainpower and more on the decive in their pocket that gives them the answers. According to cultural analysist Sherry Turkle in her TED talk Connected But Alone, she says that “Those little devices in our pockets are so psychologically powerful that they don’t only change what we do, they change who we are.. we get to present ourselves the way we want to be by editing what we say to one another”. She then does on to say something very interesting in that “we are all getting used to being alone together” Technology is “simple” to us, it’s something to distract us from loneliness and we can mold ourselves online into the person we wish we could be in the real world. It has become an increasingly crucial form of communication. It’s almost as if we’ve completely forgotten how to speak to each other face to face and this is an even more heartbreaking fact in the younger generation, those in elemantary and middle school who have
I remember how I felt when I got a postcard from my best friend in 3rd grade. She was in London at the time and I’d missed her terribly at school. Back then, there was no such thing as texting or Facebook, just patiently waiting by the phone and constantly checking the mailbox at the end of your street. When that postcard came, I remember feeling absolutely elated seeing her handwriting and reading about her adventures. Nothing will ever replace the feeling of getting a handwritten letter from someone you love, especially nowadays since the chances of anyone taking the time to write an actual letter, buy a book of stamps and send it in the mail is so rare. The idea if a “pen pal” is long deceased in …show more content…
I remember imaginatively playing in the backyard with my older brother for hours, never wanting to come inside the house. I remember the nerves of calling a friend and worrying about one of the parents picking up the phone, then spending the entire call wondering if anyone was listening in on another line. I remember board game nights and ping pong matches and dancing to the handheld radio at midnight when our power went out one winter. No worries about who “liked” your photo online because photos were something keepsake of your own, not for anyone else. Nothing to distract you from long conversations with friends. No pressure to live up to your “online persona” because that didn’t exist and you were you. I miss these times and I feel like we are so engulfed in our online life that we don’t get to enjoy our real one and the people in it. Technology is in incredibly useful tool but I feel like it takes up way too much of our lives and …show more content…
In the back of your mind, you’re most likely worrying about the notifications and text messages you’re missing out on. We seem to have forgotten how to live unplugged. The internet has been proven to rewire our brains into having a much shorter attention span and lower cognitive ability. The ability to access all the world’s information at the click of a button or the swipe of a screen makes people less inclined to want to retain that information in their own brain, thus relying less on their own brainpower and more on the decive in their pocket that gives them the answers. According to cultural analysist Sherry Turkle in her TED talk Connected But Alone, she says that “Those little devices in our pockets are so psychologically powerful that they don’t only change what we do, they change who we are.. we get to present ourselves the way we want to be by editing what we say to one another”. She then does on to say something very interesting in that “we are all getting used to being alone together” Technology is “simple” to us, it’s something to distract us from loneliness and we can mold ourselves online into the person we wish we could be in the real world. It has become an increasingly crucial form of communication. It’s almost as if we’ve completely forgotten how to speak to each other face to face and this is an even more heartbreaking fact in the younger generation, those in elemantary and middle school who have