This is another essay on the mark of age. It is a question that relates to those social networking sites we all know about. It also relates, in a broader sense, to the world wide web, to connection, and that constant need to be jacked into the port of the electrical friendship. I watch those around me in their obsession with these things, and I wonder if I’m becoming an old fuddy-duddy.
I was talking to a friend three days ago. The two of us are close in age. Our conversation went something like this:
She: My brother took me to dinner to celebrate his new job. He spent the whole night on his mobile phone.
Me: What do you mean?
She: I mean he was texting, and linking into his social network to update friends about what he was doing.
Me: Did you speak to him at all?
She: I felt I had better a conversation with the bartender, and he was two rooms away.
In many ways, I understand what my friend went through. I work around individuals who are connected almost eighty percent of the time. When asked if they could give up texting many of them say they cannot.
Is this that moment in a person’s life where he understands that time has made him an old man with the sea? The sea is something he may try to conquer, but in the end it swallows him. This is a question I often ask myself because, try as I might, I cannot relate to this continuous connection.
There is something else I should mention. I lived in a time when the mobile phone was as rare as the unicorn. No one had one. It wasn’t until I returned from Australia in late 2000 that I purchased my first mobile phone stateside. And I’ll admit a small addiction to the device, but nothing to surprise the newest generations. Could this history be the reason that I have difficulty relating to the generation after my own?
Philosophers and social scientists will have their revelations about our social networks, mobile text messages, and quick attention spans. They will ponder the effects of our electronic age on the human mind, and they propose multiple answers for generations to come. Still, are we loosing our minds to these connections or am I not able to understand because I’m getting old?
