I hate smartphones. Nothing corrupts so widespread and so thoroughly. They are herders of the world’s greatest herd of sheep. In times of ennui, soulless children and adults alike become little more than mindless animals, obediently chomping at food for unthought, force-fed to them through the bottomless gate to oblivion that sits in their hand.
At a school meeting in fall term, Elena Levin ’17 gave a Choate talk on smartphones and social media culture, describing her personal experiences with Snapchat. I share in some ways a similar experience, having been extorted into creating a Snapchat account in the first day of freshman year. However, except for a few week-long stints, I still do not use it. Many of my friends had very negative reactions to the Choate talk, describing the impossibility of being without their incredibly personal lifeless hunks of metal for even an hour. Personally, I cannot empathize.
These rounded rectangles lure their victims close with promises of productivity and limitless activity, only to strip them of their skin and personality. The dining hall is populated with brainless creatures that behold their dull metallic idols with religious delusions of connectivity, praying to shadows in order to interact and connect with other souls through an invisible web, but in the process, entangling and enshrouding themselves from each other.
Where are the lions, eagles, and whales but on the fields, skies, and oceans of the wild unknown? What fantasy causes humans to presume that we can connect with each other without gazing upon the intricacies of complexion, body, and voice that behoove us with revealing character and soul? Why do we deign to enjoy the beauty of great novels, paintings, and symphonies in favor of vomiting meaningless applause at superficial imprints of other people?
Now, don’t get me wrong: I have always been a fervent supporter of technology, and I, too, have a smartphone. It seems I’ve been spoiled such that older phone interfaces now seem obtuse and unintuitive. However, every time I take out my phone when I have nothing to do, I find myself feeling like I am decaying inside. Social media in particular is perhaps one of the purest forms of vanity ever to be conceived by humans, in large part due to the irony of browsing social media to avoid conversation. Every time I relegate myself to ambivalently pawing at my phone in the dining hall, I regret losing time I could have spent in the confines of a great novelist, in the embrace of a great musician, or in the company of the great people sitting right next to me.
Certainly, smartphones have their benefits, but they pad functionality with an endless stream of media, advertisment, and clutter. In subconsciously absorbing and processing this information, we subject ourselves to the slavery of mass consumerism and gradually lose ourselves. Nowadays, we seem to only do things halfheartedly. We work while texting, we text while shopping, we shop while speaking, and we speak while working. We have blended every aspect of our lives with those of everyone else’s, leaving us as a cohesive unit of ruthless ego-strokers with no appreciation for deep thought.
Intellectual discourse and pursuit have been replaced by communication with an indistinct homogeneous purée of thought through arcane obstructions. This destruction of thought is a transgression upon humanity, and claims that this flavorless monotony outshines the music of intelligence, of art, and of our race. Our species has been corrupted in these spheres to the extent that billions of our kind partake in these fallacious fantasies, submitting themselves to the contrived propaganda. Such sufferers to globalization have lost their greatest gifts: their minds, their hours, and each other. Never has a symbol of technological progression regressed our own stories so far, for we have thusly robbed ourselves of our selves.
