There was an episode the other day of Barbie: Dreamhouse Adventures where Barbie and her family take a break from technology for the weekend because they're too attached and need to learn how to appreciate life while 'disconnected'. The characters endure a hard weekend of Pioneer-Life with camping, water fetching, and mosquito bites. This sounds like a typical 'technology is bad, life is better without it', but in general the vibe of the episode was that technology makes a lot of things better so we should appreciate what we have while remembering to disconnect in order to have meaningful interactions. This message could have been better articulated in the episode, but overall I'm really down with that message! Especially given how much attention I've been spending on my technology usage as of late.
To be clear, I love technology. This is not me waving a cane in front of my lawn saying "phones are turning us into mindless zombies" and sharing those wild anti-technology images made by artists who then share them on Facebook because that makes sense. I love my phone and my laptop and my Kindle and there is nothing wrong with using them during breaks at work or during downtime at home or while waiting for a bus, but there is something to be said about our collective over-dependence on technology. In the past I've been strongly pro-technology in all varieties, but my latest focus on my own use of my gadgets has left me kind of in the middle.
It started with me seeing posts online telling people to stop electronic-device usage an hour or earlier before going to bed. It's supposed to help you get to sleep better or something, but the main problem I found was "If I turn off all my gadgets, what am I gonna do for an hour?" Whenever we lose power in the house I sleep a lot because as soon as it gets dark I go "Okay, nothing to do, time for bed". That same mentality was what was dawning on me with this 'no tech for an hour' rule. If I turn my gadgets off an hour before bed, I'm just gonna go to sleep an hour early. The thought that I couldn't think of anything to do without my phone or laptop for an hour bothered me, and it led me to focusing more on what I actually do with my spare time. I noticed that I reach for my phone way more than I thought I was! And to be honest, I'm not actually that bad about it and I was still bothered! I put it away for conversations and don't use it during meetings and whatnot, but I realized that all of my spare time was spent refreshing Facebook and Tumblr and if that was boring me I would, literally, put my phone down and pull up the same websites on my computer just out of habit. And that's what I was doing for hours on end. Outrageous, right! I couldn't believe it myself!
I took some time to process this. I'd sort of been convinced that there are only two ways to feel regarding technology: You hate it completely and think everyone needs to stop using it completely, or you love it and think everyone should use it as they please. I knew I wasn't chill with how much I was using my gadgets, but I still recognized their usefulness. Social media is a great place to communicate, my blogs and digital diaries are fantastic places to organize my thoughts, my games allowed me to be entertained when standing in long lines or when I was by myself, and texting is the fasted and easiest form of communication for anything and everything! Technology is great and useful so I didn't think I should give it up completely, but I also obviously felt myself, and maybe everyone, is too connected. I realized from all of this that I fall somewhere in the middle! Technology is great, but everything in moderation! Young people especially are so defensive of our use of technology and that's fine because it is a useful and fun resource, but to a point. We are all a little too attached to our phones! That doesn't mean get rid of them completely, just think about how often we use them and why and cut back in order to make room for other activities or personal interactions besides staring at a screen for hours on end. Technology brings people from around the world together, from digital penpals to gamer buddies, and gives us the ability to interact on a scale never seen before and that's amazing but we're lying if we don't say we a lot of use aren't using it as a form of communications and are instead wasting a lot of our time sitting alone sharing images other people posted as a 'hobby'. And that's a problem we all collectively need to work on. What's convenient for today isn't always what's best for tomorrow.
Again, technology is fabulous, but I really did need to cut back so I could enjoy literally every other cool part of life that I was missing out on in addition to my tech-time. So, I still have my phone to catch Pokemon and send Snapchats and I still have my computer to post on my blog and visit Facebook, but I checked out some Nancy Drew's from the library. I forgot how much I loved reading those. I got a pennyboard from a friend and I'm learning how to ride it. I've always wanted to be a skater-chic. I'm holding game nights with my sister, and sure, some of them are video game nights, so it's still me using my electronic devices, but I think that's the point Barbie and I are trying to make. Technology is best when it brings people closer, not when it creates a divide.
No comments:
Post a Comment