The plugged In Generation
It’s 5 am, and my alarm goes off, not just an ordinary alarm but my first alarm and not just another ringtone but a motivational one which I know because I set that alarm knowing that I will never hear it. Why do you ask? Because like you, I am too busy sleeping. My sleep schedule was hit in the face by my phone as I spent hours the previous night(like every day) surfing the internet and asking google too many random questions like how to wake up early, irony right? I know.. and finally, I think about waking up after my third alarm goes off, with a special express guilt trip about sucking the life out of all those alarms previously and throwing my morning routine I finally get myself up with a quick peak (30 min) at my show-off friend Instagram, talkative friend messenger, taking depression pill Linkedin and my beloved opinionated best friend Twitter with a tweet good Morning with a heart ❤ yeah, that’s how my morning starts by plugging myself in, and hence that’s the reason why I am a so-called plugged-in generation.
Sounds familiar right what technology has done to us with the constant bombardment of ads, and political propaganda? Telling us why we are all wrong and a random guy on the internet is right about everything? Why should we go to that place that we know we don’t want to, wear that dress that we know we are uncomfortable with but we do it anyway why because its a viral dress and in front of what goes viral in internet self-respect, discipline, and manner are the tiny tiny thing to worry about and worth throwing out of the window right?. you ask why? Cause I need that instant gratification and the approval of everyone around. Dopamine is a very powerful thing yet, most people believe drug addiction is dangerous. Look around you, what Dopamine we get from the toxic use of the cellphone has done to us. so-called smartphones are in reality making our generation dumb yet, we still wonder what’s wrong with us.?Why are so-called Gen-Z anti-social and depressed? Why can’t we focus, why do we have an attention span less than that of a goldfish? and why are we called the plugged-in generation? Maybe if we put our phone aside for a while and think about it we can get the answers.
“It is okay to own a technology, what is not okay is to be owned by technology.”
Are we actually, the plugged-in generation or an enslaved generation? The modern form of slavery which constantly pretends to give us the option of which pill to swallow red, blue or black. I mean why is there any necessity to have a pill at all in the first place? Advancement in computer science has developed many complex algorithms and programs that can mimic human behavior digitally which can accurately predict the things we like and those we don’t. The real question is, are we making a choice or is it someone else making it for us while making us believe that we are the one choosing it? because at the end of the day we are the ones behind the screen touching and accepting prompts on our screens without a bit of a hint what’s actually going on and why we see what we see?
“we’re all cyborgs with cell phones and online identities”
Everything has been so easy, cash has been replaced by virtual wallets and online payment trends have skyrocketed shopping is one click away, and friends a screen touch away which is kind of like magic. It’s a good thing that this human civilization is much more connected and well-informed than all the other previous civilizations to ever exist on the face of the earth. But at what cost? Aren’t we paying too much to be connected? Modern smartphones can collect every piece of information that we don’t want to share as we are all a small data point for these big corporations who constantly feed our data to their algorithm and the output generated makes them billions of dollars in ad revenue . It feels like being disconnected for a while is a luxury that only few can afford and meditation is the key to enjoying that luxury which trades in only the currency that we have in the limited amount i.e. time and attention. Data is to the information age as is oil to the industrial age. and it’s so important to our modern economy that without data backing things, it may come on the verge of collapse and yet we have never raised our voice against our data privacy and haven’t bothered about checking our privacy settings in our phone.. How this data is used will ultimately determine who controls the world and where the society is headed towards .
You may be thinking right now that I must hate social media and being connected but that’s not the case I don’t, I really don’t. Being a tech enthusiast myself, social media is a miracle for me. I am just against the culture that lives more online rather than offline. People have forgotten how beautiful nature is, how wonderful the sensation of The Earth is when stepped barefoot on the ground, how satisfying can a real hug be rather than an emoji of hugging, how precious smile is rather than a smiling emoji, and how wonderful a person must feel to get an actual letter rather than an E-mail. All these things really get me confused sometimes because we are what we read, what we see, what we feel. Moreover, how we perceive the world is very much dependent upon the social life we have, communication that we have, that’s how human civilization has worked and will keep working but if you look at my plugged in generation a little too inside, there is this hollow gap that we have. Of course, we believe that we have grown but this growth is like the growth of bamboo, no matter how high we think we can climb. At last, we will bow down and be hollow inside. My question for this generation which of course is my own generation, don’t you rather grow up like a tree slowly and silently and be strong within the roots ? not knowing the difference between the real connection and illusion being connected is a real danger . So ask yourself this, are you really just a plugged-in generation or are you absorbed one?
