Before heading back to campus a couple of weeks ago my parents decided to take me out to breakfast on a Sunday afternoon. After sitting down I couldn’t help but notice two others at the table beside mine. A young boy near the age of nine or 10 was enjoying a nice brunch with his iPad while a woman that appeared to be his grandmother silently sat there as a third wheel. With headphones in and cartoons a go, the child couldn’t be happier to ignore any other form of life within his immediate proximity.
The look of indignation resting upon the face of that kid’s grandmother pretty much sums up my attitude toward where our generation and future generations are headed. Whether you’re on the streets, in class, at a restaurant or out on the town, people have their faces shoved in their phones.
It seems as if there are no boundaries or sense of rudeness when it comes to cell phone use. I can’t even count the number of teens I’ve seen out on a date where both of them just sit there on their phones scrolling through Instagram or Facebook. It honestly makes me sick.
I know I’m a millennial too and I often fall short on my preachings, but it appears as if people are losing the art of simple human-to-human interaction and conversation. The act of just sitting down with friends for an evening and talking about life or current events or whatever is becoming more and more rare. People are so self-absorbed about their alternate identification within their cell phones that they don’t take time to focus on their real selves and the real people around them.
Not only are many cell phone habits rude, but our generation is missing out on so many real-life experiences because of this behavior. No one can simply enjoy a night out with friends without sending snapchat videos to all of their other friends to prove they are having fun. No one can go to a concert without their phones up in the air trying to videotape it the entire time. No one can do anything, it seems, without documenting it in some way. It’s just such a waste. Instead of living in the moment and enjoying that moment for what it is, so many people live through their screens out of some necessity to prove to others that they are interesting.
People tend to think that what’s most important is what others think about your life. I disagree. I say what’s most important is what you think about your life. If you need to prove to yourself that you’re cool and interesting, the best way to do so is to put your phone down and enjoy your life for what it is.
Every moment is a blessing. Whether you waste that blessing on your phone or not is up to you.
