Generation of idiots

Generation of idiots

I happened to meet a girl during one of my journeys to Pune who was in the same compartment with her parents. The girl took out a smart phone and started to play with it. After sometime she stopped it and kept the mobile back in the bag. Then she sat idle for a short while. After a few minutes she again took the mobile out and started to send messages and then moved into some funny games in it. . She enjoyed it more than anything else. I was amazed at the speed with which she handled the most modern gadget. She kept on playing with it till the end of the journey. She was not willing to interact with other boys and girls in the same compartment. She also must have forgotten to look at the different scenery outside and to enjoy the beauty of nature. Her parents were not much worried about what she was doing. In fact, they would be happy about the technical competence of their child. This is not an isolated incident. This is what we see nowadays everywhere around us in the roads, parks, houses, places of worship and in classrooms people who are lost in their mobiles.

Here we need to make a serious reflection on the impact of mobile phones on our lives. It will be better to raise a few questions and also to find personal answers.

i.      Does mobile phone really making our lives comfortable?

ii.      Does mobile phone isolate us from our friends in our vicinity?

i.     Are we becoming alienated from ourselves as a result of the extended use of mobile phones?

There is a claim that mobile phones made our lives more comfortable and we are able to communicate in a better speed. We have the necessary and latest information in our mobile that is just a few touches away. For anything and everything we have mobile applications. In the present times mobile phone is our best friend in order to get out of boredom. We have music and games in our mobile at our disposal. And above all, mobile phone offers us infinite possibilities for communication.

We need to accept the fact that mobile phones are taking us away from our near and near ones around us. While interacting with people far away we forget to give a smile to the people around us and to offer them a helping hand. We find both men and women keeping music with earphones throughout their travel that they are not bothered about the fellow travelers. There is a deadly silence existing during our journeys. I attended a youth meeting in Pune and there I found that youth were not able to focus on the class on a relevant topic. They were busy with their own mobiles and they pretend that they were listening to the lecture. Many young college students also have the habit of sending messages and updating their facebook profile while they are in a class. We have forgotten to understand the impact of the gadgets on our lives. We have been separated from our near and dear ones. We can call a person depending on our time. There is no need to meet a person face to face in a mobile conversation and you can have it while you eat, drink, drive or even work. We become so selfish that we make call to others thinking that they are free and engaging in a long conversations. Before the popularity of mobile phones we used to see people interacting a lot during long journeys. Those days travel used to bring a lot of pleasant moments with other travelers.

The development in the mobile phone technology has gone to greater heights these days. Different companies around the world are developing applications for making our life better and convenient. Recently there was a report about a mobile application that will tell about the right time for having sex. There is another mobile phone technology for the security of women.

Mobile phone was earlier used just for making a call or sending a message. But nowadays mobile phone is mainly used for internet access. With the various attractive internet packages by different companies people are able to access internet at any time and also to be available in the virtual communities. Our children are able to be available in social networking sites all the time. Many students believe that their self esteem has increased with their activities in facebook.

We are also becoming alienated from ourselves. We design certain gadgets to make our lives comfortable and we cannot be satisfied with the technology we have at our hands since the technology is ever growing. We feel like possessing the latest technology all the time. We think that we will be out of place in a contemporary society if we do not have the latest technology. To live is to have the latest technology has become our thinking pattern.

We also failed to understand that mobile technology has brought down our concentration. We become more and more disturbed in the world of mobile and find it difficult to focus on a single activity. The people of the past generation were able to do difficult and complex calculation without the aid of a calculator. They had a sharp mind to do such complex calculations within no time. Nowadays we depend upon a calculator for everything even for a simple calculation. I think that the extended use of mobile phones destroys our memory. We used to remember a number of landline contact numbers. But with the coming of mobile phones we don’t need to remember phone numbers. I have found many people who do not even remember his or her own mobile numbers. What will happen if that person happens to misplace his mobile phone when he is in a different and difficult situation? Mobile phone is giving us new kinds of tensions and we need to find remedies for it.

A device like mobile phone has all the applications to make our lives comfortable. But it doesn’t have an application to tell you about the right use of a mobile phone. We need to draw a line regarding the use of mobile phones. Let us not forget the words of Albert Einstein on technology. “I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots.”

Joseph Shibin SJ

De Nobile College.