It’s a funny, sad thing. We don’t argue with each other anymore. We argue with some random celebrity on Twitter who has an opinion on something we saw on the news feed. We don’t call a friend to talk about an idea. We send them a photo. A meme. A screenshot. And then we talk about that.
The human connection has become a series of little boxes on a screen.
I saw something in the news recently that really got me thinking. A country took away access to social media, and the young people reacted like someone had pulled the plug on their life support. It was raw, unexpected, and it showed just how deeply this thing has burrowed into our lives. We’ve been talking about dopamine hits and addiction for a while, but we’ve never seen what it looks like when you remove the oxygen mask.
The outside of our world looks the same. People are walking, talking, going about their day. But beneath the surface, a whole world has been silently eaten away, just like a bunch of termites feasting on a wooden door. We’re all hollow inside. Our connections are fragile. And now, the slightest bit of friction, a tiny bit of disagreement, can feel like a personal attack. We get offended because we’re used to living in a perfectly curated, non-confrontational world of our own making.
Who’s going to tell this generation that a childhood without a screen actually existed? That there was a time when you didn’t know your friend was on vacation unless they were just… absent from school? That the only way to look thinner was to get thinner?
Back then, you had to talk. Really talk. Conversations were long, meandering affairs because that was the only way to communicate. People argued with each other, face-to-face, about trivial things, and it was glorious. I miss that. Seeing two people in a housing society shouting at each other reminds me of simpler times. It was messy, it was real, and it was human.
Now, we just post about it in a WhatsApp group. We don’t even wish each other face-to-face. We don’t visit anymore. People are even stopping watching TV. Everything has to be on our phones. News has to be bite-sized and delivered in 10 minutes.
Where are we all headed?
I guess only time will tell. But I can’t shake the feeling that we’ve traded the richness of real, messy life for the sterile comfort of a photograph. And I wonder if we’ll ever figure out how to get that conversation back.
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