Sitting in a waiting room today, I looked around and realized there was no conversation going on. Across the entire room I counted 17 people. They were all engaged with hand held devices. The handful of children were clustered around their parent’s devices.
Nobody was reading a magazine or newspaper. Nobody was talking. It was eerie. A room full of people and no eye contact, no conver
sation, no engagement.
It was spooky.
What happened to parents reading stories to children, knitting, writing, reading or talking to each other to to strangers? As our technology gets more savvy, we lose a bit more of our humanity. As technology upgrades year after year, our children lose out on some of the sweetest things of all – playtime, puzzles, socialization, and interaction.
A solitary game of Angry Birds replaces Tic-Tac-Toe. A word game of Words with Friends replaces a family playing Scrabble, Boggle or Hangman. Technology isn’t bad but when it takes the place of connecting, socializing and engaging with the people around you then it has overstepped it’s usefullness.
The end.
Related articles
- iPod Isolation (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
- Should iPods carry health warnings? (theregister.co.uk)
- School bans iPods (smh.com.au)
