…as I write a blog post on my own personal laptop…

I have a serious love/hate relationship with technology. Daily, I preach about how I detest every single thing about technology and consumerism, but then I get on my iPhone and tweet about it…doesn’t make much sense. For a while, I’ve been trying to sort out what exactly I was thinking, but I think I might have finally put my finger on it.

Tonight, instead of going out with friends or sitting in my basement watching criminal minds, my mom, my brother and I decided we would watch Glee together. My brothers both have a social life that rivals that of Paris Hilton, so this was kind of a big deal to get the three of us together. We put some pizzas in the oven and got situated on the couch and I put the DVD in. All was well until about halfway through the first episode when my mom grabbed her iPad. Upon hearing the ‘ding’ from both her iPhone and the technological slab made when she received an e-mail, she immediately had to retrieve it and divert her attention from Rachel Berry and Quinn Fabray. Seeing that it was okay to include our technological life in our family evening, my brother immediately reached for his phone and began texting at the speed of light. Prior to settling down on the couch for the night, I made a point to put my phone and laptop upstairs so I wouldn’t even have to be tempted. But that’s the thing, doing something like watching TV with my family, especially Glee, I don’t even want to touch my phone. I just think it’s rude and annoying. After both my mother and my brother were consumed in their technological lives, I left the room to come up to my bedroom where I have since been writing this post. Neither blinked an eye.

On more than one occasion, my boyfriend has called me to make sure I wasn’t dead because I hadn’t responded to a text message for over 4 hours. This being said, I hate texting. It’s something I’ve gotten used to because, unfortunately, it is most people’s primary form of communication. To me, that is just pitiful. Call the damn person if you want to talk to them! Don’t just casually text them or write on their Facebook wall to form a relationship with someone. I’m genuinely worried about this technological generation, my brother included. They don’t seem to get it. My brother and his friends talk about Facebook like it’s so much more than just a social networking site. I kid you not, this is an exact quote from one of his friends “Yo dude, did you see Johnny Bravo’s status yesterday? It got like 30 ‘likes’ man. Nahhh that kid’s statuses always get a ton of likes.” DO YOU HEAR YOURSELF?!

All I’m saying is that people need to get out more. Bottom line. Keep your phone at home for the day and see what happens. Delete your Facebook and see who your real friends are. Don’t have full conversations over text; use it for what it was meant to be used for- brief, short messages to relay simple information across. Have real relationships with people. Read books! Get outside and spend time with other people, not just chatting with them online. If you know me, you know how much I hate consumerism, which is clearly where my hatred for technology stems from. I genuinely fear for a day when people forget how to communicate with another person. This generation is being provided with all the technology they need to allow them to hide behind their computer screens and their phone keypads. I have enough confidence in myself to speak out-loud everything that I type here on my blog, but I know that that is most definitely not the case with everyone. With our growing technology, people will become more and more dependent on the written word and, frankly, I feel as though our generation is completely abusing this. When you think of the word ‘word’, you automatically think of the written out, full of letters, word. But try and imagine the ‘vocal word’. Why were we taught to speak if we were only going to grow up to write everything down? The power of someone voicing out a word is so much more incredible than their ability to type it out.

Bottom line: don’t abuse or depend on your technology, someday your kids might not even know how to hold a real conversation. Also, no one really gives a damn what you had for breakfast this morning so don’t put that crap on Facebook.