There are a million things to get distracted by these days, and it’s exhausting! Last weekend I watched Dazed and Confused #alrightalrightalright – aside from being shocked at little Ben Affleck, I couldn’t help but notice the simplicity of it all. When they were out with their friends, they were just out with their friends – no posting or tweeting about what they were doing because they had no cell phones. Someone told me recently that Friends is making a comeback amongst high school students for the same reason – high school kids are intrigued by the 90s when there were landlines and no social media. While it’s amazing to be able to see friends or family halfway across the globe, technology, specifically our phones, can overstimulate us to the point where it literally becomes too much to handle. I have days where I’m just on overdrive, switching between so many apps and programs that I get anxious when I try to go to bed and slow down. As an older millennial who has already lived during a time when things were a lot more simple, I get why younger people are intrigued by this time and don’t think it’s a hopeless goal.
When I hear people reminiscing for simpler times, I’ve mostly hear older generations trying to force millennials to go back to the way it was before, the live the way they grew up – folks say ‘you need to talk to people in person more’ or ‘you need to stop taking pictures of your every move’… as if they would have listened to their elders say that when the computer came out. I had this conversation with someone in his 60s recently who said that their 20-year-old needs to just give up the texting and learn how to call people. I can’t say I disagree that sometimes texting isn’t the right approach (which I am patiently reminded of by my boyfriend), but I do think trying to convince people that they shouldn’t take advantage of the latest in technology is a lost cause. Instead, we need to help people see that they DO have a choice on whether to engage in the areas that are making their life feel more complex.
I have never been on Facebook but am on Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat. Facebook came out when I was a third year in school and my school was one of the first ten schools to get access to Facebook. Sure, over the past 12 years, there have been times when I debated joining because I didn’t want to miss out on what everyone else was doing. Recently I’ve debated joining because it’s become such a crucial forum for marketing. The reason I’ve never done it though is mostly because of time – in the scheme of what I want to spend time on, I just don’t have time for it. I bring this up because even though social influences may make you feel otherwise, I think it’s up to you to make a choice. I chose to limit myself to certain social media platforms because I thought my head might explode if I joined more. If you are craving more simplicity, you can find ways to make your life more simple, like the olden days. Maybe it’s by removing certain things on your phone so you aren’t so addicted. Maybe it’s putting your phone away for an hour every night so you can relax without the pressure of tweeting or texting. Technology is incorporated into so many areas of our life now so we can’t go exactly to the way things were, but we don’t have to chain ourselves to it… if we want to feel more free.
Leslie Delery 