Yes, we have an addiction... now what?

It's clear that we are addicted to technology, but what are we supposed to do about it? Let's look at some ways people deal with other addictions:

Cold turkey: We could remove technology from our lives completely, just cut it out and never look back. But, our society is completely dependent on it, so there is no way that cutting ourselves off would do any good. All that would do is put us at a complete disadvantage for grad schools and jobs. Not to mention technology is everywhere and understanding it and using it has become essential for survival. It would be like trying to get over alcoholism in the worlds best stocked bar... So, that option is a negative.

Group therapy: Considering that there are no help groups for technology addiction, I am thinking this isn't going to work. Looks like we won't be standing in front of a group of people glued to their iPhones and Blackberrys to say "Hi, my name is Meghan and I am a technology addict."

Pills and patches: I can't even figure out how that would work...

Aversion therapy: Electric shocks when you get near a piece of electronics? Wouldn't that be using technology??

Maybe technology addiction isn't something we should be getting over... maybe we need to approach this a different way...

Perhaps instead of figuring out how to reduce our addiction to technology we should be looking at increasing our knowledge of other things. Ah, there it is. Here is my solution, if you can call it that. Use technology, but also, learn how to do things the old fashion way. Learn how to use books and magazines to do research. Learn how to start a fire without a lighter and a fire starting log. Learn how to do math without a calculator, if you could do it in elementary school you should be able to do it now. Read a book instead of just reading Sparknotes. Take a walk instead of a drive. Learn how to talk to people face-to-face instead of texting. You get the idea...

If you know how to do things the easy way (with technology) and the hard way (without technology), then you won't have to worry if the power goes out for a couple of days because of a storm. Not to mention, you will be the most popular person during that storm!!

Technology is not flawless, but the more you know and the more ways you know how to do the same thing the better of you will be. If one method fails you know you have more ways to approach it.

In summary: Be as addicted to technology as you want, just don't be DEPENDENT on it.

Put in your iPod, tune out the world

I have noticed more and more people around campus putting their iPod in the second that they get out of class. To me this seems strange. I understand the love of music, but it always seemed a little rude to me. Do we need to block out the world immediately when we leave the classroom or step out anywhere we may have to interact with people?

I understand the use of an iPod on a walk or run. I understand listening to music in the car. I understand using an iPod when studying. What I don't understand is why it is necessary to have the iPod in to walk three minutes to class. Are we really that afraid that we will have to say hi to someone? Apparently, seeing as a good deal of people put in the headphones, put their head down and go.

Take out the earbuds. Listen to the leaves crunch. Say hello to friends that you walk by. Pay attention to the world around you. Who knows, you may like what you hear.

Various Obstacles

You don't realize how often you use the Internet, until you don't have it. I can't help but hum the Joni Mitchell song "Big Yellow Taxi" as I type this... "Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you got 'til it's gone?"

It is somewhat sad to realize that I am as dependent as everyone else on this constant connection. I wanted to share some of the obstacles that I encountered during what I refer to as the "dark week." Some are common sense issues and others were more surprising to me because I didn't even realize it would be an obstacle because I didn't have to connect to a browser to use them, but alas, I lost the Internet, not my browser.

- Checking my e-mail in the morning to see if any classes are canceled or if there are additional things that I need to factor into my day
-Checking Facebook (we are all creepers, don't even try to deny it!)
- Checking the weather using my weather widget before getting dressed. I was not dressed appropriately for the weather one single day this week!! It is quite hard to predict the entire day's weather based on what it is like in the morning, especially in Western NY where one day it is 65 degrees and the next it is 20 degrees!!
- I was making a CD for my boyfriend and wanted to look up lyrics to one song to see if it was actually appropriate... I ended up not putting the song on the CD just to be safe!
- Researching for a paper
- Researching information for my radio show in order to write the script for this week's show
- Finding an article/blog to use for my Social Media essay
- Looking up a word online (I actually had to use a DICTIONARY!!!)
- Doing additional research for my interview for Northwestern University the following Monday
- Working on my application for Northwestern (because it is all online!)
- Organizing the NYC trip that my boyfriend and I are taking over Thanksgiving break
- Bidding on a Christmas gift for my Mom on eBay (I tried to have my brother do it for me, but by the time he remembered, the bidding was over)
- Talking to my bf. Chris is in Rochester, and neither of us are "phone people," so we tend to do the majority of our communication on AIM and video chat, neither of which are possible without the Internet.
- Google mapping (yes, I did just turn that into a verb...) my way around Chicago
- Coordinating the submission of recommendation letters on the online system

There are so many more obstacles that I encountered, but to be honest, I have tried to block it out of my head.

One thing I found surprising this week was how many people communicate solely via e-mail and Facebook. I would call someone to figure things out and they would let it go to voice mail and then respond via email. I can't say that I am not guilty of it, but I will be rethinking doing that from now on!

I can only hope that when I return home on Tuesday I will be able to launch into that amazing world that I have felt so lost without!!

Real Life Proof

In my last post I talked about my memories about the Internet and my fears for future generations, but I didn't really mention anything about society's addiction to the Internet. This is something I think about all the time. Have we become too dependent on the Internet?

-I started this post last Saturday and then stopped writing it because things got so busy. The ironic thing about that is that is that when I returned home from Rochester late Sunday night I found out that my roommate's boyfriend had fiddled with our wireless and I no longer had Internet. So here it was, my opportunity for a case study about Internet addiction.

I figured that I shouldn't have a problem with this. Yes, I do use the Internet a great deal, but surely I could survive for a while without it. I go to my cabin in Canada where I have no power or running water, let alone Internet. I have always been perfectly fine there, so why not now? There are computer labs on campus that I can use to access the Internet, I just wouldn't be able to use it at home.

Boy, was I wrong. This past week has been one of the crankiest ones in recent memory. You don't realize how much we depend on the Internet for our day-to-day lives, especially in college. I felt so lost and disconnected, in all honesty I probably would have felt like a hermit if I didn't have my cell phone.

There is so much to write about the problems that I encountered that I will have to break it up into a couple of separate posts in order to not bore my readers completely.

A whole world at our fingertips...

The internet is an amazing thing. We can find more information than we could ever comprehend just by opening up our browser. In fact, we could find more information than we could ever want. The question that a lot of people are raising nowadays is, is the internet more bad than good??

I love the internet. I don't how I could possibly survive without it, but I do question sometimes about how much good and how much harm it is doing to our society. I have been fascinated by the internet since it first came out. I still remember logging onto AOL for the first time and the first time I got an E-mail (granted it was junk mail, but I was still excited). There was a never ending world on the internet and I could just keep clicking through and finding more and more things! Of course, I was only allowed on the internet for a half hour at a time because being on the internet meant that we couldn't receive phone calls, and with dial-up connection that meant that I never got very far. But I was young and in awe of everything that was on there. The funny part is that this was before the internet was what it is today, there wasn't all of the shopping, videos, social networking and all of the things we had today... it was just the internet... and that was fine by me...

I look back at those days and laugh. I remember creating my first website when I was probably 11 or 12 years old and working on it whenever I was allowed on the internet. I put hours into that site, uploading images and linking to my favorite sites (most of them game sites or websites about llamas [don't ask]). I was so proud of that site even though I knew that no one went to it. I was out there, finally part of this amazing world. Anyone could find my site and they could follow my links and enjoy all of the things that I enjoy. I had arrived and I had no worries about safety or security on the web. I used to play games and chat in chat rooms with no fear of anything, who could touch me on the internet?? This is one of the reasons I can look back and laugh.

I see the internet a little bit differently now. I don't know for sure whether it was the internet that changed or whether I just grew up. Now you can't search Google images for pictures of flowers without getting porn, no matter how high you set the filters. You can't really trust what you read because you are never too sure who wrote it. There seems to be danger lurking at every site you go to… Identity theft, sexual prowlers, hackers, lies, viruses, trojans... who knows what could happen with that next click.

I worry about the younger generation, the kids that are on the internet but don't understand the dangers that are out there. I was there once, and no one could touch me... that is until I was in a chat room and some creeper asked if I wanted to "cyber"... I didn't even know what it was, but I knew from the feeling in the pit of my stomach that it was not something I was supposed to do... Needless to say that was pretty much the end of my chat room days and the end of me feeling safe and protected on the internet. But kids make mistakes and I worry that with how many dangers are out there now and how many more will come these younger kids are in a lot of danger.

Constant Connection

We live in a digital age. Everything seems to be electronic, potable, compact, connectible, state-of-the-art... we won't accept anything that isn't. We are able to contact who we want, when we want to, and when we can't, we aren't really sure how to handle it. "She has her phone off... what am I supposed to do now???"

As hard as it may be for my generation to remember, there was a time when you had to wait for people to return phone calls. When you had to wait for someone to get home before they could call you back. Now, if someone isn't home, you just try their cell phone. People can always be reached because we "can't stand" to be without our phones. But, what happened to being able to escape it all? Does that even exist anymore? Could we survive without that constant connection? Maybe the better question would be, do we even want that escape anymore?

What happened to being able to escape it all? When people used to go on vacation, you couldn't get a hold of them unless you were VERY, VERY important, and even then they had to be in their hotel rooms to get a hold of them, which they rarely were (people actually took vacations and relaxed, compared to people today that sit on the balcony of their apartment in Jamaica on their laptop doing work... but that is a whole different topic that I won't get into right now...). When did all of this change? Sure, there were some work-a-holics before that did work on vacation, but I remember laughing at people like that. Now, it is nothing new or exciting to see someone on the beach with a cell phone and a laptop having a conference call with company back in New York. When did this happen? When did we decide that we can't even run to the store without our cell phones? "What if someone tries to call me?" There is an answer to that question. The problem is that no one seems to like the answer anymore. They would have to wait.

So, why do we NEED our cell phones constantly? Let's face it, it's not really about having other people be able to reach us, it's not really about business. I am not part of a business, but I will still turn around and drive back home if I forget my phone. It's not that I am worried there will be an emergency and that no one will be able to get a hold of me. It's not that I am planning on making calls in my free time while I am out. I don't claim to be any different than anyone else, I just see the problem here. As humans, we have a desire to connect, to communicate and we have these devices that allow us to always talk to people and it has turned into a drug for us. I don't believe that it is the technology itself that we are addicted to. It is something much more primal than that. Connection with other humans.

It is purely human nature to want to connect, but I do worry that the technology has taken it a step too far. I don't know that we could go back to the way things used to be with out having some serious mental issues. Separation anxiety, depression... I am not exaggerating in the slightest. I think humans would feel very lost and lonely if we lost this technology and it would have serious repercussions not only on a personal level, but a societal level as well. I'm not saying that our society would crumble if we suddenly lost our cell phones, but we would have some major adjusting to do, and it would be very hard on us.

Ponderings

I have always heard that my generation is so incredibly lucky because of the amount of technology we have and how easy it makes our lives. I can't say that I necessarily disagree with this, but it is not all sunshine and rainbows, as other generations may believe. With this surge of technological innovation, comes not only the benefits, but also many consequences as we become more and more dependent on our cell phones, TVs, computers and various other gadgets.

I will never argue with the fact that technology has made our lives easier. I can't even imagine writing a paper without the internet as a resource. I can't believe people were able to make long distance relationships last without text messaging and video chat. I don't know how people found their way anywhere without Mapquest or navigation systems. The thought of sitting with a map and plotting out a route just seems ridiculous. Yes, technology has made our live easier, but has it made life too easy?

What would happen if we no longer had the internet to look up every question we had? How would we self-diagnose ourselves? How would we look up those lyrics that we can't understand in our favorite songs? Would our generation be able to go to a library and find enough information to write a paper? Would we be able to handle going even a month without TV or our cell phones? I can't help but wonder whether we have become too used to the ease of living life with technology. I question if we have forgotten how to do things without using shortcuts. I am not sure we still have the skills necessary for survival without this mass amount of technology.

Is it possible that we have actually become addicted to the technology???