To my iPhone,
I love you, but I also really dislike you.
I love you for how easy you’ve made it to call my mom, text my friends, and respond to emails. Your quick access to Safari has solved a lot of my problems and answered a lot of my questions. Checking my school assignments and grades can be done in less than a minute. You help me keep up with appointments – without you I know I would forget. You’re there when I’m waiting in a line, when I’m bored, and when I’m walking to class. You do a very important job of waking me up each morning.
But I’ve become so dependent on you. I find myself pressing the home button to see who’s trying to reach me far too many times a day. I look at you for entertainment when I should be doing something else, and I'm spending my time procrastinating. You distract me from homework. You take away conversations between my friends and I. You pull attention away from important things. While I lay in bed trying to sleep, I look to you instead of reading a book, straining my eyes in the meantime. Instead of listening in class, I’m looking at Snapchat or Facebook. I hate when I’m telling a friend something and I know their mind is completely on what they’re reading on their phone, not on what I’m telling them.
What would we be like without you? Conversations wouldn’t be cut off by an incoming call. I’d have better grades and pay more attention due to less distraction. Social media wouldn’t be such an addiction to us all.
Imagine if we still wrote and sent letters to our friends near and far -- not just shooting them an impersonal text. The simplicity of texting and emailing has altered our minds to thinking that taking the time to write a letter is archaic and time-consuming. (Yet, we will probably spend that time on Twitter, later.) Would the delivery of the mailman be as satisfying as a text notification?
I hate the dependency I’ve placed in you. I hate how important you are to me. You’re just a piece of manufactured glass and plastic. A material thing I place such value in. A broken phone is one of the worst scenarios. What if someone needs me? How will they be able to reach me? How will I be able to reach them?
I despise how it’s an unbreakable habit. I’ll always want to be able to reach my friends, and them be able to reach me. Checking you all day is a mindless activity -- so mindless, I don’t even realize the constant checking for texts.
I worry for the technological era in which my children grow up. How early will they learn to love everything you can do, like I do? How soon can a child learn your mesmerizing effects? Will it be even worse? Will an eight-year-old be sending me text messages? Can we imagine where the expansion of iPhones can go?
Sincerely,
A concerned, yet devout iPhone user.
