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.