Oh, modern technology! How did we live without it for so long?
Case in point: Right now I am at my 11 year old daughter’s football game. Actually, the game doesn’t start for an hour. I just had to get her here early so the team can warm up first. I brought my tablet with me to help pass the time – with its portable keyboard, it really is more like a laptop than a tablet. I turned on my phone’s mobile hotstop, and was instantly connected to Wi-Fi using my own secure connection/device.
It. Is. Awesome.
It begs the question, however: are we no longer able to simply “be” anymore? Looking around me, as I wait for this game to start, I realize I’m not the only one. Several other parents are doing exactly what I’m doing with their own tablets; those that aren’t are glued to their cell phones instead.
I can’t help but think back to my own days as a kid, when my mother had to cart my siblings and me all over the place for our various activities. There was no Wi-Fi. Smart phones weren’t even a thing. So how did she pass the time?
She socialized. In real life – not from a computer screen, connected to social media. My mother knew the other parents of the kids who played on the same teams as we did. During practices and games, they chatted, gossiped, whatever. I look around at all these parents, moms and dads of the kids my daughter spends hours every week with, and realize I don’t know a single one of them. I don’t know their names, I don’t know what they do for a living, or how they spend their free time. If I were to get sick, or stuck in traffic, I don’t know even one other parent from the team I could call to pick up/drop off my child for me.
It’s interesting that the internet and social media has opened up the world in so many ways. I can chat with a friend in Europe or Australia from my bed in real time, as if they are sitting right next to me. Yet because of that very same technology, I can be more isolated than ever before, having no interaction whatsoever with the people who really are sitting right next to me.
There’s probably a balance that needs to be struck. I’m curious, though -how many of you are in the same sittuation? Regularly interacting in real time with people in all corners of the globe, but know next-to-nothing about the people who really are right next to you every single week?
