Too Much Of A Good Thing?

Technology. We all love it. And we use it, constantly. For our generation, the big event was the advent of the iPod. Before that, came the laptop. And way before that, in the dusty eons of our grandparent’s time, was the desktop computer. At around the same time, the Internet was invented. Surprising as it may be, it has only been around for fifty years. Things that we find commonplace today, such as being in constant communication with the world via social networking sites, are, in fact, new innovations.

One thing that each of the above things has in common, is time. They are all time-wasters. Timewasters..that we have become dependent on. The more stimuli that is provided to us, the more we need it. Today, I can go online, and within seconds, access a database of more than a million videos (YouTube) or head over to Mibba, and instantly delve into a world of poems, stories, and the like. Everyday, more are added, comprising a digital storehouse that will never run dry. If you share content on these sites, it’s even worse. You find yourself constantly checking back to see if someone’s read it, to see if somebody has commented on it.

The other type of time waster are the social media sites; Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, etc. Once you have an active account on any of them, it can be addicting. Today, it’s commonplace to see people whipping out their phones, and updating their statuses at any given moments, or going online for the sole purpose of reading other people’s statuses. And to make it even better…most of these sites come equipped with a chat function. You aren’t just limited to reading what others post, and commenting on it..you can talk, in real time.

That, is just the Internet. Even if you’re somewhere which (*gasp*) does not provide you with WiFi, you can just pull out your iPod! Depending on the model, there a millions of applications you can download; fun little games that specialize in being addicting. If you don’t have any apps, you still have music. Headphones in..world off. And just to make it even better; you most probably aren’t cut off from the world even without WiFi, because you have your phone. You can text the world, and even access the Internet. With all of the above, it’s a miracle anybody ever gets bored. Which is a good thing..or so you would think.

All of the above things mentioned were originally invented to be boredom busters, or a way to contact people easier. Instead, they have become necessities. YouTube boasts millions of users, who daily check their subscriptions for new videos. Mibba has many users as well, who spend their time writing pieces for the site, and checking to see if their favorite authors have posted. When we aren’t getting our daily dose of stimuli from those sites and others, we’re on the social networking sites, whiling hours away talking about..nothing.

We, as a generation, have become used to constantly having a means of entertainment. The more things that are invented to combat our boredom, the more our attention span shrinks, because we don’t need it to be long anymore. On the contrary, it’s beneficial for it to be short; there are so many things that require our attention, all at once. When was the last time you sat down and read a book? Or did anything sans music? Our generation has even invented a new language; chat-speak. A language based on people’s need to move fast, because they don’t even have the attention span to type out a full word, or employ proper grammar.

We are in an age where the written, non digital word is slowly becoming obsolete..where meeting up in person to talk about something is no longer normal. The concept of ‘just doing nothing’ is practically unheard of, because there is just so much to do, so much which demands our attention. But the more things that demand our attention, the more fragmented it becomes. The more we get used to constant outside entertainment, the less we learn how to entertain ourselves. We format our lives into a series of brief status updates. Normal social interaction becomes awkward; you don’t need to read body language or facial expressions when you communicate via blocks of texts on a device’s screen.

Technology is not a bad thing. It has created many avenues to an enrichment of life. But sometimes, it takes over. Do we really want to be known as the generation who stays holed up in their houses, talking to each other via chat, text, and IM, who have a basic need for constant entertainment? In the iconic words of a saying dating from the fifteenth century: ‘Sometimes, it’s possible to have too much of a good thing.’