Is your loneliness worth it?

Whether I am walking down the street or taking the train, one thing is apparent; we have our heads stuck in a phone and it is making us distant. We all seem to be hypnotized by the lights of our phone screens. No one talks to each other face to face, not many people can say they have had a meaningful conversation lately that wasn’t over the phone. Laughs are shared through emojis and special moments are shared through exclamation marks. We do not connect anymore and even when we are with our friends we are still constantly checking our phones with hopes that there is something there waiting for us. This obsession with phones and technology is not our fault: we are a new generation who believes that we must be on top of every bit of news all the time. No one feels in place without their phones. It is this obsession with phones that will lead us all to stray apart. The constant communication through a screen may seem like we are more connected than ever before but the truth is we are all isolated behind our phone screens.

Many people argue that technology has helped us connect with other people who are not necessarily in our lives. Many will say that we cannot do without technology because it has improved our business and social lives. We must, however, think about all the other aspects of our lives that technology affects negatively, even though it might not seem like it. We are always checking our phones, even when we are with the people who truly matter. Most times our conversations rally around what we saw on Instagram or on Facebook. Our generation no longer does anything without a little light hypnotizer in our hands. I too have been a fiend of my cell phone. I have been guilty of checking my phone even though I know that there is nothing on my screen. Checking our phones has become an addiction to many people, but most times we do not even know it. It was thanksgiving when I had a small argument about me checking my phone. My brother, cousin, friend and I were watching a movie that we were enjoying but I found myself constantly checking my screen even though I knew that the person who I most wanted talk to was right beside me; I was so used to the rush of checking the phone that I kept checking it. My friend ended up getting mad at me for constantly checking my phone.

Even though most of us are addicted to our phones, we still feel the sense that something is lost whenever we send texts. Most times we feel as if our points are not received by whomever we talk to because we cannot see their facial reactions. Recently many researchers  have explored the question, “Does technology make us more lonely?” Many have found that despite of the constant communication we have with people all over the world or the amount of “friends” we have on social media, we still lack satisfying face to face communication. The  researcher Sherry Turkle and the author of the piece Alone Together describes this as us being surrounded by a “technological bubble”  that keeps us isolated from real human contact and interactions. They also find that we continue to feel lonely because the conversations we have will never be able to replace and satisfy the real life connection that we all desire.

Cell phones are not the only sources of technology that kill our day to day relationships, We have products like video games and other digital experiences on  a computer screen that affect us. Most children lock and isolate themselves away because they are too busy engaging in their digital worlds and are not taking the time to go out and talk to people. One look at the average family shows that most families do not actually spend time together. Let's say they are eating dinner; they will most likely do it over watching television without actually talking. Most of our communication is done over technology and we are not actually experiencing connections with each other. It is said the babies develop better with face to face interactions, if this is true it is most likely that we will still need these interactions even as adults to feel loved and not lonely. Phones, computers, video games, social media and a lot of other technology based products have taken us away from spending with real life people and as a result we are more lonely.

The generation before us did not have to rely on technology as much as we did, and their relationships were much better than the ones people have now. Words were said out loud and expressions were not emojis and people did not make up internet droids of what they want themselves to be. People were more together and they were happier because they had the one thing that we do not have. They did not have a technology bubble that we now have. It is evident in how long their relationships last.

It comes as a surprise to us, the younger generation, when we ask an elder how long they have known their friends for and they give an answer like 60 years. We are astonished by this fact because relationships now only last for about a month because someone typed the wrong thing in a conversation. Our generation is much more isolated than any other generation because we are shield behind our phone screens, we will forever feel lonely because we will never give up our phones, no matter the price we pay: loneliness.