COLUMN: Are you a slave to technology?
You wake up and log on to Facebook, scrolling through your news feed long enough to find some inspiration to rise out of bed and stand up.
You brush your teeth and go back to your phone because you got a text. Meanwhile, you continue brushing while texting, because you’re good like that.
Then you resume getting ready after logging on to Spotify to start playing your favorite songs.
Ha, your hair looks funny – better Snapchat that.
Log on to Twitter and see if anything, like, important is going on in the world.
Send between 15 and 172 more texts throughout the day by consistently looking at your phone in three-minute intervals, even though you know you’d hear it if it went off.
Sound familiar?
You might be a slave to technology.
If your phone goes off, you immediately attend to it. If you leave it at home when you run to the store, you feel naked. If you’re eating a delicious-looking meal, you must Instagram it.
Not only that, but it takes five different apps to help you sit through a $1,095-per-semester lecture.
For many people, it is a way to feel validated. Every “like” on Facebook makes you feel as if you’re on the right track with life. Every “retweet” makes you feel like what you’re saying is important.
Filtered photos, Tumblr confessions, 140-character graphs, Facebook messages – they are all ways technology has a grip on our understanding of what’s important and how we fit into the world.
A guy in my class confessed he is diagnosed as addicted to his iPhone. He said this while he had the phone gripped in his palm.
I’ll admit, if I don’t have my phone, I feel naked.
I will also admit that is the most ridiculous thing ever.
I should feel naked when I don’t have clothes on, not when I don’t have my phone near me.
It’s one addiction that doesn’t seem to have an end. New gadgets and apps and sites are being developed every day. We are living in a technology-based world.
Therefore, if you’re going to be addicted, make it a healthy one (if those exist) by using it to your advantage and not for watching YouTube videos until your eyes bleed.
But, just like with any “healthy” lifestyle, there are always some exceptions.
Commence: cat video.
