Written by Carson Hayes
No, Joe Biden’s phone did not fall out of Air Force One, but thank you for being so willing to give your phone up to the commander in chief.
If you’re a college student — like myself — you probably got your first smartphone around the age of 12 or 13 years old. If you were anything like me, you were ecstatic: “I can play Angry Birds now,” “I can have a Snapchat,” “I can look cool at school,” etc. You remember this joy. Even if you are not my age, you remember the development of the phone into this complex and wonderful device that we call a “smartphone.”
This technology that we have been blessed with is awesome, and you can probably list all of the great features it brings: connectivity with your friends and family members, easy communication between hospital staff, quick emails to your professors. The list goes on. We are seldom grateful for these wonderful advances in technology, and I truly believe that we should thank God every day for them. But that’s not where this opinion ends, I’m afraid. As you were thinking of all of the good that smartphones give, didn’t your mind think of the other side of things? You’re probably thinking of them right now: losing a conversation to an Instagram post, comparing yourself daily to others, not getting the grade you wanted because you sat on your phone for too long, saying hello to someone only to realize that they have their AirPods in. The list goes on.
I believe we are losing ourselves to ourselves. We have become so infatuated with our own comfort that any challenge to our beliefs, habits and everything in between can be avoided by swiping our thumb up a thousand times within 30 minutes and finding something that either affirms our rutted belief or takes away the thought entirely. A pandemic has been going on for quite some time, and we are losing more and more lives to it continuously. But at least a traditional pandemic only causes a person to die once. With this pandemic, we are continually being killed each and every day. Don’t believe me? Look at faculty and students during chapel.
Look at your parents and friends when you go out to eat with them. Look at your younger siblings and older grandparents when you’re visiting with them. Look at your phone screen when it’s turned off.
There are fantastic assets to the technology of smartphones, but the layperson does not need it one bit. I believe the great pros of this technology are best suited for hospitals, military, government and places of work, but not home life. So let’s give our smartphones to Biden in exchange for our lives back.
