Cell phones are destroying our nation’s youths.
We’ve created a generation of technology slaves who will probably die trying to tweet one more #yolo.
Our society will be reduced to a pile of soulless zombies clutching their smartphones.
LOL.
Relax, guys. This isn’t exactly my position.
There is some reason to the technophobe argument, usually stemming from logic natural to those born before at least 1980.
I partly understand.
For example — I’m sick of people looking at their phones instead of each other.
When I make eye contact with a passing stranger, it’s always this really weird thing where we stare at each other for a few seconds before hurriedly looking away and pretending not to look again because, you know, it’s weird.
I must have an ulterior motive.
Why else would I not be staring at my phone like a normal person?
Then it happens with people you do know.
First you’re having a conversation with a friend or acquaintance. The conversation starts to lull, and boom.
You pull out your phone and look at people more exciting on Instagram.
Namely you, because someone posted some “pics,” and that Instagram filter made you look really good.
I live in a society where I feel like an old geezer because my phone only texts and makes calls.
It’s positively prehistoric.
These are a few examples of what’s wrong with the millennial generation.
Or, as a May article in Time magazine called us, the “Me Me Me” generation.
Before us, selfies didn’t exist and neither did Twitter or YouTube.
These are signs of a doomed generation.
Imagine if we told people at the dawn of the last century that we would share personal information with people we sort of met that one time.
That every Sunday we share with these people a picture of ourselves we took on a good hair day at the most flattering angle.
They did have pictures back then, except you had to paint them or something, and that took much longer.
We millennials found a much better way.
It’s true I’m coming into a different world than my parents.
Just like how they came into a different world than their parents.
We do rely on the Internet too much, but in the same way people before us came to rely on the horseless carriage.
Certain pre-millennials shouldn’t be lecturing us on how we’re ruining everything.
You guys screwed things up for us, too.
The market crash of 2008 was definitely not my fault. I was still in middle school.
Only six in 10 of us millennials are employed in the United States. The average student debt is $26,600.
The amount of economic inequality between the rich and everyone else is the highest it’s been since before the Great Depression.
So, excuse us for trying to take things into the future with a bit of technology. Contrary to what some might tell you, technology has helped more than it’s hindered us.
This generation may not leave the house without our phones, but we’re still moving forward.
— cjellert@indiana.edu
Follow columnist Caroline Ellert on Twitter @cjellert.
Death by cell phones
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