I am sitting with a group of 4th graders I work with when one of them casually mentions that she is waiting for her dad to bring home her new iPhone 6. This prompts an animated discussion on their part about the trials of the “old” iPhones—iPhone 5s—and the significant increase in quality of life granted by the iPhone 6.
Are you kidding me?
That’s not exactly what I say. Nonetheless, with an incredulous tone and a serious jaw-drop, I ask them why they need an iPhone 6.
They respond with, frankly, all the reasons that I need one. For talking to friends, calling my mom to let her know I’m alive, and checking Facebook and Instagram.
They ask about my phone, so I show them my iPhone 4 and explain that I didn’t get a smartphone until I graduated.
Their shock comes in two parts.
Graduated, they wonder first, from what?
From what? High school. It’s as if they hope for my sake that I got it at my Pre-K ceremony.
Well what did you have before that? They wonder next.
A non-iPhone. That’s right, kiddos. A phone without internet, that flipped open because I wasn’t nearly cool enough to join Blackberry nation. A phone I received in junior high for safety reasons, to keep in contact with my parents. A phone that had a fifty-text limit each month, so I often resorted to calling my friends on their home phone—I wonder as I mention this whether kids these days even know what a landline is. And it wasn’t until later in high school that I begged and pleaded for a higher texting limit.
I realize that this makes me sound old and perhaps slightly spoiled. I also realize that I am extremely lucky to have received a cellphone—in any form, pre-historic and 2-inches thick or not—and that those older than me wouldn’t have been able to believe it, either.
Every year, we see more and more technological advancements, and today, it seems like people all across our society—my grandmother and I, for example, text on the regular—are hooked on our technology.
So hooked, we are, that quite often there’s no need to be “in the moment” because instead we can experience it from behind the glare of our screens. We can also upload the moment: we can post, tweet, or snap it virtually simultaneously, and just as quickly the rest of the world can enjoy it as well.
I think back to my sophomore year, when I spent Spring Break in the snowy woods of small town West Virginia on a Habitat for Humanity trip. Twenty of us huddled together in a small cabin with bunk beds, one bathroom and no phone service.
Leaving technology behind is freeing. We talk, debate, play old childhood games, occupy our time interacting with each other instead of sitting in the same room half talking, half scrolling through newsfeeds on our screens.
And when something momentous, important, laughable and strikingly beautiful stands in front of us, the reflex to reach into our back pocket is slightly delayed. It’s a moment to be enjoyed and savored and laughed at first, and captured for the public eye second.
Technology is important. It navigates us—and even goes so far as to predict the roadblocks and traffic ahead, answers our endless questions—honestly, what would we do without you Google and Siri?, and allows us to communicate with long lost friends or those living far away—my dad’s third grade class recently reconnected on Facebook. I’ve seen the impacts of computer programs for students in local schools, and have myself made an effort to learn a little more each day, while waiting for a bus or in line at the grocery store, by replacing apps for social media with those for kindle and podcasts.
Despite these benefits—and many, many more—we can’t forget to look up from our screens once in a while. To enjoy the roads we navigate, debate together about the questions we ask, to soak in the view through our own eyes before we look through the lens, to communicate with those sitting around us, right now.
Kids and kids-at-heart, remember the world passes by while we scroll through on our screens. There were days, believe it or not, where we got by just fine without a phone, and you probably won’t miss it as much as you think.
Julia Janco is a Trinity senior. Her column runs every other Thursday.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.