Well, let me tell you a story. My uncle died young. He died when he was a teenager. It was known that he died from working at a mobile phone factory a looooong time ago. The radiation was too much and being already weak since birth, he died. Many have died due to electronic devices. Some because of the over-exposure to radiation, some because of over-heating cell phones and some, they died from lightning strikes when they were using their phones. There're many reasons one can die, even from just a mobile phone. But look around, does anyone really care about all these? When you're on the train, you see people watching dramas, tweeting about how they hate the commuters, probably playing Scramble with Friends or Smurf Village. When you're on the streets, you see people checking in to Foursquare, taking pictures of random stuff, talking on the phone, on Whatsapp talking to tons of people. When you're in eateries, you see people Instagram-ing, reading the news on Flipboard, etc etc. We're just basically glued to electronic devices.
I'm no different. As I'm typing on my Lenovo Laptop which is about 3 years old and dying soon, I have my phone beside me. I feel insecure with my phone beside me, to be honest. I bring it everywhere. When I'm having my meals, when I'm on my laptop, when I'm in the toilet, when I'm just downstairs to buy a can of coke. Probably most of you think I'm crazy. Or that some of you are like this too, but nah, I'm not waiting specifically on anyone to text me but I just feel kinda insecure without my phone around. I think my phone's like the most important thing in my life now. Cos it has like everything I need in my life. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, games, my calendar of events, photos (although my laptop has all the photos but my phone has most of them too). I think I've become greatly dependent on my phone and laptop so if they were to ever crash on me, I swear I'd spend any amount to save them back. Unless.. they're beyond to the point of saving then probably I have to consider getting a new one but my phone's pretty new so no worries about that.
Okay, look at all the kids on the trains. What are they doing? Playing their iPad. Which I don't even have one! Yeah, my parents think they're a waste of money and I'm not working so I don't have the money to get one. I'm 19 this year, I have a Samsung Galaxy S3 and a Lenovo laptop which is about to die. I got my first ever phone in P6, I think. Can't remember. But kids are getting to play iPad at an age of 3! No, I'm not jealous. Okay, maybe a bit cos I don't get to have a big ass tablet to play games on but I'm thankful I'm the 90's batch. No joke. Being a 90's kid means still being exposed to Barbie dolls, Lego (okay, I play that cos my brother forced me to), traditional tops and my parents' kuti kuti. (If you don't know what's kuti kuti, it's a traditional children's game whereby they flip colourful plastic tokens on top of another person's. And if you do, you get that person's tokens.) Playing at the playground and meeting the kids of the same block to play catching. The electronic device I came with contact with first ever, was a super big, heavy and bulky computer which I even forgot the brand that runs on Windows 95. Which was first launched in freaking 1995. I only got a computer that my family shared when I was in primary school. I remembered playing some game called Math Blasters. Then I started having a Gameboy Advance, I think. And a mobile phone. The old Nokia type, but not the type you see on Tumblr. It was a hand-down from my dad. It had the games Snake and Bounce on it. My favourites at that point of time too. I remember always begging my mum to let me cut my Barbie dolls' hair cos I wanna give them a new look, which my mum didn't allow cos that would mean she has to get me a new doll. I remember my brother always forcing me to build towers using Lego with him and have war. I remember my grandma teaching me how to spin a top. And I remember my parents teaching me how to play kuti kuti. I remember meeting my neighbours during Mid Autumn festival under my block to run around with lanterns(burning them in the end) and play with candles. (Don't play with fire. Bad example here.) These are all precious memories that a kid born in the year 2000 and above wouldn't get to have.
I spent my childhood playing toys. Real toys. And running around like nothing mattered. It was fun, really. But what do kids get nowadays? Just gluing themselves to electronic devices indoors. I mean, it's not healthy, really. It makes you fat easily, especially with how the parents are spoiling their kids these days so they feed them with tons of good food. Staring at the LED/LCD screens all day spoil their eyes and make them short-sighted. But they are unable to leave the electronic devices unless their parents forcefully snatch it away from them or threaten them.. somehow. And slowly it becomes a habit of them to depend a lot on electronic devices and in the end, they'll become like me - unable to leave their phones behind. It sucks, how we depend so much on non-living things. We're like slaves of the technology. We find it hard now to write down the contact numbers of the people we meet on an address book like what most people do in the past. Sometimes during a talk or lecture, people would just take out their laptops, tablets or phones to record down the content instead of writing down key points. Seeing how the technology has changed our lives, I find it kinda sad that we are being controlled, furthermore, by a non-living thing that we humans created. But I have to say, technology did improve our lives. It made communication easier and faster. We spend lesser time on travelling, so on and so forth. Well, who knows. Maybe one day someone might invent a teleporter so we'd reach our destination in minutes.
Okay, so this marks the end of my post. I know it's been a long one and I'm impressed if any of you even finished reading everything but thanks for reading my blog posts and hope you lovelies would continue to viist my blog for more. Till next time! X
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