We are addicted to our phones. They’re the first thing
we reach for when we wake up, and the last thing we put down before we go to
sleep. They’re our constant line of communication with outside
world—all of it—for better or for worse.
The internet has brought with it a wealth of easily accessible
knowledge and opportunity for the average consumer, but with that has arisen a
new challenge for humanity: we must discern whether the information with which
we are constantly bombarded is valuable or not. Yet, this task is
not as simple as it might seem at first glance, because often the decision of
whether or not we absorb new intellectual material is a passive one.
The notion of mindlessly perusing[1] Facebook as a source of diversion is, just that, mindless. We spend countless hours inhaling a collage of seemingly arbitrary media, whose quality is questionable at best, and ignorant or offensive at worst. Admittedly, I'm the one posting half of this shit. Nevertheless, we are often completely dissociated with the alternative of spending time doing something else—anything else.
The fact of the matter is that people have survived without
iPhones for the entirety of human existence. We pride ourselves on
our ability to learn, analyze, create—our ability to actively seek
psychological satisfaction. The internet, at first, was the key that
opened a vault of knowledge that, for most, was traditionally hidden behind
lock and key. Yet, it seems that we have come to a point where our
dependence on virtual reality has compromised our social tendencies
indefinitely.
We have, in effect, replaced social diversion of all forms with
one that from a practical perspective is markedly inferior. We forgo
news articles written by professional journalists, and, instead, settle for
tweets written by otherwise unremarkable strangers. Instead of
meeting face to face, we meet on FaceTime. We consume every void
moment[2],
competing for likes and retweets, perpetuating an artificial social
responsibility that we created for ourselves.
Suddenly, people have become more concerned with if it looked like
they were having fun in their photos, than if they actually had a good
time. Similarly, we have convinced ourselves that studying and
acquiring an acute knowledge[3] of
this virtual reality is a valuable use for a shockingly large portion of our
time.[4] This
is not by the explicit fault of anyone’s own, however, but rather, by our
implicit ignorance of this problem's overwhelming pervasiveness.
As a result, without even realizing it, we've allowed social media to consume our lives. I think it's about time we do something about it.
[1] I fear, I may be one of the
minority who describes their admitted Facebook overuse in such rhetorical
terms.
[4] I got a Facebook account
when I was 13 years old—if I spent two hours a day on Facebook until I was 80,
I’d have logged about 48,776 hours on the world’s
most popular social media outlet, by my best estimate (that’s more than 5 years).
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