The dawn of the internet set a precedent that would change the course of humanity. Connecting people who otherwise may never have crossed paths, presenting them in real time to each other. AOL, AIM, email, messages sent in an instant to someone across the world. The beauty of it cannot be understated. But how much is too much?
With technology advancing at an astronomical pace, when do we as a collective say enough is enough? How could we have let social media set the tone for that sacred “third place”. Why are we forcing everyone to grow up? Why can’t kids just be kids? I had the privilege of growing up in a time I watched the birth of the internet. I had leap frog, the wild west of YouTube, cha-cha, Omegle, flip phones, CD players to MP3 players to the iPod shuffle. From being online bullied to doing some of the bullying, no one knew just how crazy the internet and technology could be. Being told to go to websites with silly names as a child only to go on the family computer and see some things no young child should see, but those were the times! You had CD games, to coolmathgames.com and addictinggames.com, the world was your oyster.
Social media was only barely beginning. I was a tad too young for MySpace but boy oh boy was Facebook a free for all back then. Then we got Instagram. Twitter was always around but I didn’t start using it until I was thirteen, and that was only because I wanted to join in on the conversation around One Direction after spending a year refreshing their profiles and seeing them interact with fans. I wanted that to be me. And of course, from their fandom dawned modern day “stan” culture. As beautiful as that time was (which is now being romanticized by teenagers which makes me feel old and I’m not even old), when do we accept we may have let things advance too far?
Having any type of news, good/bad (mostly bad) readily available at the tip of our fingers first thing in the morning, every hour on the hour, when do we agree maybe that isn’t so good for us. To be so desensitized to everything, we are witnessing atrocities multiple times a day only to be like “damn that’s crazy” and then swipe away until we see something we like. I know we all know how addictive social media is with our dopamine receptors and such. Anyone we want to talk to or see is one click away. We’re all too accessible and I don’t think that’s a good thing.
Especially in the job market today, why do you have to promote yourself as the product. Why are we making ourselves “the brand”. When the power grid could fail at any moment, when the internet can just go away, what do we have left? We’re crafting these lives, for who? To look good to who? Who cares? If people did things for themselves because they like it and they’re being genuine and real, then who can tell them they are wrong. That is what I want to see, people being real. But yet it is engrained in us to create such a different reality to simply be “aesthetic”. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, doing it for the wrong reasons leads to everything being so fake. Everyone being a liar (which I’ll touch up on in another post).
I wish we could start just hanging out and being real. We really did lose that “third space.” People don’t go outside much anymore. People don’t know how to hold conversation or to just be alone with their thoughts. We fill every second of silence with mindless scrolling. Of course, this doesn’t apply to everyone, but with how things have been presented to us it sure does feel that way.
The biggest take away is that it’s okay to just be you. Like what you like, do things for you. Who cares what someone on the internet is doing. Do you think they love their families? Do their friends really like them? Do their kids like them? We spend so much time caring about what other people think, you have to stop and remind yourself, no one cares. Most people are so wrapped up in their own world they aren’t paying attention to what you’re doing. So do things because you want to, not because you think you have to.
Sometimes I think it is such a shame we’re too connected. Bring back letters, bring back postcards, start sending notes to people you love. The internet itself isn’t inherently bad, but it’s what we do with it. If we could just love more, and care more, and protect each other more, I think that would be really nice.