I hear it all the time: “When I was a kid, we didn’t have all those fancy phones. We played in the mud with our friends.” Usually, these words are spoken from our parents or, more often, our grandparents.
It is true that we have technology that older generations did not have. Is this a bad thing, though? Are we to be reprimanded constantly for utilizing the latest and greatest that our world has to offer? Personally, I don’t agree with that.
Technology is not a crutch for us. It is not holding us back, it is not preventing us from living our lives and it is not keeping us from making friends. Technology instead opens a door for us to live our lives to the fullest. We are now able to communicate with our friends, family and colleagues at any time of the day with great ease.
To the older generation that says technology distracts us from the world we live in, let me remind you of a couple technological advances. Before the current wave of smartphones, you had the television. Before that, the radio. Even before that, people used newspapers to inform themselves on what was happening in the world. Now, we are able to get news updates instantly and respond accordingly.
For example, say your child’s school experiences a bomb scare. Thanks to the current technology, we can instantly call our children, locate them by satellite and check the local news for details.
Technology has advanced since the days of old, and it is progressing with more momentum now than ever before. However, this technology empowers us; it does not cripple us. Our species is living longer, learning more, and connecting better now than ever, and I, for one, will never see that as a bad thing.
