The Digital Age

Brendan Bolt
Aug 31, 2018 · 3 min read

The Digital Age is upon us and there is not much you can do to avoid being apart of it. I’m glad I grew up in the years I did because I feel like my generation got a taste of life not dominated by technology and internet and were eased into the digital life. Growing up I was the typical kid who was always outside on the weekends riding bikes and just hanging out in my neighborhood friends yards trying to think of fun stuff to do like play wiffleball or make up a new game. I got my first cellphone when I was 12 years old, however now you see kids that are 9–10 with phones. My phone was nothing fancy just a Motorola Razor but just like that, I could talk to my friends all day via text messages and not even have to go out. When I was punished by my parents it went from being grounded to them taking my phone for a few days. Living in the digital age is kind of like living with your blinds open all the time. Everyone can see what your doing, who you are with, where you are, etc.. do to apps like Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook. In Lo and Behold one point that really stuck out to me was when the family was in their kitchen talking about the death of their daughter. The image of the “nearly decapitated” girl was taken by a first responder and sent via email to friends. Soon enough the image was all over the internet and the parents had to see their deceased daughter. That’s something that is scarring and will stay in that families mind forever. This made me think about when Osama Bin Laden got killed and I was 14 years old. I had just made a twitter about a month before and the first thing I saw when I logged on that day was an image of his dead body riddled with bullets. I remember thinking “how is this on the internet?” Another part of the film I noticed about living in the digital age was the section about video games and gaming addictions. Once I got to about 6th grade all me and my friends did was play video games with eachother online. We also talked about video games at school all the time. Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 was legit the talk of my grade for like 2 years. “Everyone go on CoD when you get home from school.” When Tom from Lo and Behold said that you can lose relationships, distance yourself from your family etc.. I can totally see that. When you game you’re basically in a virtual world where you can be something you create. When I think of the digital age, I think of social media, video games, and the internet. A quote from the film that stuck with me was along the lines of “Technology is the competitor for critical thinking”. How I interpreted this was instead of trying to actual think out things, you can just find out the answer with tools like the internet in seconds. A quote from the article “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?”, by Jean Twenge, reads “The arrival of the smartphone has radically changed every aspect of teenagers’ lives, from the nature of their social interactions to their mental health.” This quote has a lot of good points in it. First being about the social interactions. Smartphones changed the nature of a social interaction for teens because you can interact with people you have never actually met via social media messaging. It’s more likely today that you will get a girls number via Snapchat, Instagram, or Tinder than you would if you tried to ask in person. Also going off changed nature of social interactions, people tend to be more straight forward on the internet because it is not face to face. By straightforward I mean rude or condescending. Everybody knows a keyboard warrior. Along with the social aspects we see the mental health aspect. Because of teenagers having access to social media, theres kind of a standard that comes along with it. Kind of like a social (media) norm. Kids can be labeled as rude things they are not just because of a social media post. Which then can take a heavy toll on ones mental health. In the end, I think the digital age is crazy at how far technology has come especially with some of the science shown in the film. I think in the future it could be helpful to pull back on the technology and let us try and figure out new things on our own.