Raising Smartphones (Raising Hope)

In 1969, the first message was sent between the Interface Message Processors at UCLA and Stanford University.  The internet was born.  The world—and how its people interacted with each other—became forever altered.  In a whirlwind of innovation, computers, microchips, cell phones, smartphones, laptops, WiFi, social media, sprung up like incessant Twitter notifications.  We became obsessed with complete strangers, checking in on them (for even trivial matters) more than we check in on our own families....

nice to see where journalism has gone in
recent years (how can you blame them, though,
when reputable print sources are being phased out
for digitized attention getters)

With the internet, great things happened: knowledge became streamlined and more efficient,  awareness for worthy causes have been able to come into the public eye, and companies have gotten their starts.  People have been given a voice, proliferating the melting pot (or proverbial group chat) of America. But that's not to say that the internet is perfect; in fact, it's far from it.  

Our world has spiraled down into a "cultural anomaly" state of dependence.  Kids are handed "smart"  devices before they learn to tie their shoes.  Our phones go everywhere with us—which is probably why they carry more bacteria than a public restroom's toilet seat.  When the internet goes blank, so do we.  To put it simply: the internet has killed communication.  

The internet has taught us how to live under 140 word limits and 10 second time constraints.  We like to rush through things, scrolling quickly while getting the most information possible—so much so that we tend to scroll past the people and world events in our lives, too.  In the darkness of 1 a.m. browsing, we're trained to be careless and impatient.  Reaching hundreds, thousands, or even millions of fellow internet dwellers at once, we've never been so alone.  

Or, even when we think we are alone, we might not be.  Webcams, public WiFi, online transactions, and dating websites are feeding grounds for cyber security threats and deception.  We allow ourselves to be lulled into a false sense of security from behind a 13" screen and a backlit keyboard, thinking the "best action...is not to be worried" as strangers hack away at our safety.  

The digitization of our world has made us believers in a society without consequences.  Just hit "delete" and all mistakes will be erased. Or let them run viral.  After all, our culture seems to idolize poor behavior.  Take the "How Bow That" girl whose claim to fame came from an exiguous middle-school-dropout education and a violent streak.  

We've been confined to the radius of available network connection for nearly all of our lives, trapped under a net of virtual social obligations.  It's hard to realize how much we rely on the internet until we are faced with, say, a power outage or data overage charges; it's also hard to admit how many excuses we are willing to make for why we rely on it so much: "I'm bored," "I can't sleep,"  "I was curious about something," "I need it for ____".  In the end, the internet won't be going away anytime soon, but what might go in its place is even scarier: our humanity.