DISCONNECT TO CONNECT
How many times have you seen
a whole family having dinner together in a restaurant? Sure many times. Now the
question is, in how many of them they were more interested in their mobile
phones than in their relatives? Probably the answer is many times again.
Nowadays almost everyone has
a mobile phone… No, let’s call it smartphone, because if it was just a phone we
probably wouldn’t spend that amount of time with this device. The term
smartphone explains perfectly its own meaning: a clever phone, capable to do a
lot of things and save a lot of information. In it we can install a lot of apps, that make our smartphone even more
useful and clever. It has advantages? Of course. Are all advantages? Sorry, but
the answer is a huge no.
There’s no need to say that
this new technological era has changed completely our lives. Mobile phones
were invented to make easier long-distance communication. As everything in
this world, it has been improved little by little until now. We’ve passed from
a phone of 2 kg to a small piece of aluminium of 150 g. No doubt it’s an
impressive advance that makes it more portable, which is good but also bad.
And that takes us to the
disadvantages. This portability lets us have our smartphones almost everywhere,
especially now that water-resistant mobile phones are being fabricated.
Basically, we always carry on this small device with us, even when we’re
sleeping we have the smartphone near us. And, let’s be honest, when we can’t
find our phone, we get really nervous. So, effectively, we have become addicted
to the smartphones.
I think it’s a pretty
serious problem. We depend on that little square, we can’t keep calm without
it, even when we’re not using it, we need to know that we have it on our
pocket. And all that… For communication? Our response (I include myself in that
group of addicted people) would be that we need to keep in contact with people
we aren’t with at that moment. But, honestly, most of the people we talk with
through the mobile is people we have seen a few hours ago and we will see again
in a few hours. Anyways, it’s okay to chat with someone you need at a certain
moment… What it’s not okay is to forget about the people you have around.
Don’t tell me you have never
been chatting or checking social media while hanging out with some friends… and
then you arrive home and chat with those friends you’ve “hang out”. Don’t we
notice it’s stupid? Instead of taking advantage of the time we have with our
friends, we waste it looking at a screen. If all our relationships go by
through a screen and not through moments together, something is messed up.
When we are with friends, we
have to be there in all the ways, not just physically. We need to be less
dependable on the smartphones and enjoy every single moment, not just being
aware of taking photos of them and post it on social media. Lots of generations
have lived their whole lives without smartphones or anything similar, and they
have been happy, because they have really lived.
To live how God commands, we
need to connect to the world, and to connect to the world, we need to
disconnect our smartphones.
Cristina Camacho
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