I was sitting in a fairly nice restaurant the other day, and a stereotypical American family (two parents, two kids) was enjoying a nice meal with -- their cell phones, not even looking up at each other. They could not take 30 minutes away from their Twitter/Candy Crush/email just to eat a nice meal together and converse. Is it too much to ask for a family to have a substantial amount of actual face-to-face contact?
Albert Einstein has an interesting comment on this subject. As everyone in the world knows, Einstein was one of the most intelligent individuals of the 20th century, arguably, of all time. He has pages and pages of accomplishments and accreditations that you might not have the time or patience to read, but some of his short quotes are truly profound in their simplicity. One in particular that stands out to me does not include an equation, but rather, a theory about society.
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"I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots." Albert Einstein
According to mobilestatistics.com, the average American spends 90 minutes a day on their phone. That's just the average. Imagine the amount of time a serial, Instagram-posting, middle school girl uses just to pick out a filter and a caption for yet another, dare I say, pointless selfie. If you add up all the time the average person spends, it equals 23 days a year and a whopping 3.9 years in a lifetime. Nearly four years is a long time to be staring at a screen, ruining your eyesight.
The scary thing is, the way that technology is progressing and evolving, this number will most likely soar due to the increase in popularity of things like online books, movies, TV shows, newspapers, and games. Many libraries now even have an online renting option. In the days before the Internet, if you didn't know something, you looked it up in a book, or asked someone about it. Today, you can hold down one button on your iPhone, and Siri can look anything up for you in seconds.
The phrase, "generation of idiots," is an understatement. We don't need to remember a vast amount of information anymore; it is all available so easily. For example, I couldn't tell you anyone's phone number besides my own and my parents'. Those born after 1990, especially, have grown up with and always been surrounded by an exponentially higher amount of technology than our parents and our grandparents. While our grandparents have a right to grumble about technology, my generation should have the most to say about it.
This theory has two parts: we don't interact enough personally anymore, and we're becoming dumber because of it. For this article, I tried to undergo the social experiment of not using my cell phone for a day, and guess how it went: I failed. I could not go one day without using or checking my phone. To be fair, I do not have a landline. However, even if I did, I still believe it would be difficult to go 24 hours without my phone because I am dependent upon it.
We are all dependent on technology. Without it, our lives would be vastly different. Although many great things have come from improving technology, our dependence is one humongous negative side effect. I am not advocating selling everything that runs on electricity, and moving to the woods to live much simpler lives, but the next time that you are about to pick up your phone, remember that it could be turning you into an idiot.
