Spending Life with Technology

I've given a lot of people lots of crap about watching videos on YouTube  My brother spends half his life on his iTouch watching YouTube videos. But, I've been watching a lot lately for some reason. There are probably a million videos that are a waste of my time, but there are definitely some really cool videos out there! The thing is, that you have to spend a lot of time searching for and finding the cool videos. 

There's plenty of time to do that, what with long bus rides, slow coffee shop lines, and weekends filled with nothing. It's really easy to access YouTube too. So many people have smartphones and more and more teenagers are getting their own laptops nowadays. It's  become a social norm to see people on their phones everywhere. It doesn't surprise us and we don't notice it. There are times when I look up and realize that so many people are on their phones. 

People do a lot of other stuff, like work, on their phones. YouTube is just an example. But with this easy 24/7 access to technology, there seems to be so much more time to spend with technology. 

I'm not going to be completely idealistic and say that everybody should throw their phones in the trash, but I think it's reasonable to say that people should spend less time on their phones. 

We can wait in a line for 10 minutes or sit on the bus for an hour without using our phones. People-watch in the store or look at the scenery out the window. Technology has caused us to live faster; it's created a giant rush inside us as we go about our day. Everything has to be done immediately because it can with smartphones. It's not even like we're running through life anymore. We're leaping and bounding to the important landmarks, missing the baby steps in between. Those baby steps are important because those are things that can't always be replicated. They are things that will be left, even when all the big accomplishments have dwindled. 

So, I don't ask that you smash up your computers and laptops and phones. But just take a second to look at life as it's happening, not as it happens on your smartphone wallpaper. 

If you like watching people smash technology up, here's a video of that. These guys are my favorite YouTubers. Not only do the smash stuff up, the light things on fire and shoot balloons with BBs. All in slow motion. They're really cool.