Commentary
Addiction
- by august , May 15, 2008
Less than a week ago, I abandoned my old, shoddy apartment in favor of a spacious, luxurious, new house. It’s been great except… I’ve been living with no internet for the past four days and it’s been tough.
It has been both amazing and surprising for me to realize how addicted I am to connectivity. My room, thus far, has just felt cold and lonely, like there is something missing. Even though there hasn’t been anything of importance that I’ve NEEDED the internet for, I can’t stop thinking about what I could be missing. And so, I deduce that I have become ADDICTED, and I don’t use that word lightly. I have become dependent on connectivity, especially through the internet. It’s my biggest form of communication. I keep close contact with my grandma, who lives three hours away, but I haven’t spoken to her in months. I haven’t seen or spoken to my high school friend Laura since graduation, but thanks to instant messaging I know she’s now married and lives in Colorado. The internet has helped me to maintain relationships that without it would have been lost.
So is addiction a bad thing? Well, at least in terms of connectivity, I think not. Some people argue that online communication is making human interaction less personal. I disagree. Humans are social creatures, and I think technologies such as the internet simply complement our lifestyle. That being said, it might be good to take a step back once in awhile and unplug. Who knows.. my mom could be right when she says that all the radiation I get from sitting in front of a computer screen all the time will give me cancer one day.
Ralph Nader says it best:
"What does the computer do for me? I didn’t avoid the computer, it avoided me. I’ve got more information than I could use. Sure, I’ve got assistants who can get it quicker. I use a typewriter still. Because I don’t like to erase, it’s almost like I write first draft, final draft. If I was on a computer, I’d be very sloppy because it’s so easy to correct things and so on. I’ve never seen more illiterate writing then young people coming out of the ivy league schools with the computer. They spend their entire day looking at a computer. Hey, pick up a book, you know, feel it. Talk to each other, face to face. Do we really know what’s happening to us when we look at screens fifty to sixty hours a week? Kids today are looking at screens sixty hours a week. Television screens, computer screens, game screens. They can hardly put together four literate sentences together. These kids get along on two hundred word vocabularies. "
-Ralph Nader