Why Technology Is Not Your Friend

Let us take a walk down Memory Lane a little bit. I’m not going to talk about the good old days.

I’m going to talk about technology and you. And how you are an abuser of technology.

I want you to take a look at the average person’s day.

What’s the first thing you reach for in the morning when you wake up? Maybe it used to be a cup of coffee. Now it’s your smart phone. You’re checking e-mails, text, social media, whatever you’re checking.

You drive to work. How many times on the way to work are you actually looking at your phone?

Let’s be honest. How many times are you checking your phone in traffic?

You’ve got a long light. The leaves turning from green to orange. Instead of just sitting there and just daydreaming, and looking all around, seeing the trees change.

How many of you are actually just staring at your phone? Checking out a text that may have just come in? Checking to see if any e-mails have come in, because it’s been a whole five minutes since you refreshed?

You get to work, and immediately you are sitting in front of technology. You’ve got your computer in front of you. Most people in offices nowadays are IMing each other. Office instant message, instead of actually going to each other’s cubicles and talking.

When you go out to lunch, something I always thought companies should do is make everybody leave their cell phones in a basket before they leave. So they actually have an hour to recharge. I guarantee you it would allow people to be more productive. But think about it. You’re on technology all day long. We used to work without computers. Now, we can’t even do anything without a computer. The internet’s slow and it drives us nuts.

We leave the office, we’re still checking our phone in traffic.

We’re going back to our little box, because really everything is just a box.

Then we check our technology, usually before bed. I’ve probably described your life, and the majority of people’s lives in today’s world. The phone companies have had it right. They’ve learned to addict us in ways that we’ve never been addicted before.

Technology. Wow! I want you to go back, just 10 years ago. Before social media. Before any of this stuff took over. Before we all had smart phones, and we had razor phones and flip phones. We were actually buying cell phone plans based on unlimited minutes. Remember that? You bought a cell phone plan because it had unlimited minutes. We used to figure out our cell phone plan by the amount of minutes we spoke on the phone. There was a 400 minute plan. There was a 600 minute plan. There was an 800 minute plan. And a 1,000 minute plan.

We got free nights and weekends when we did most of the time talking. That’s how companies used to advertise, just 10 years ago. Free nights and free weekends.

Now, it’s unlimited data. Unlimited text and unlimited data. That’s the big thing. T-Mobile’s doing it. AT&T, Verizon, Sprint — they’re all competing against T-Mobile, because T-Mobile has unlimited data. That’s how we hook people in, because they know.

Because they know that’s how they hook you in. They hook you in with unlimited data now, because you’re crack addicts, sitting on your phone 24/7.

Ten years ago, people actually talked to one another. Now most of the time we’re spent talking to Siri, or ignoring one another because we’ve got unlimited data. The world has changed, yet socially we need each other more than ever. Take a look at the world around you and most people are walking with a downward angle of their neck. I call it blow job neck, because they are constantly look like they’re giving head to something. Men, woman, everybody, has got their head down constantly. Constantly with their head down. Because they are constantly trying to see the screen.

We are going to be a society of people, when we get older, that has dowager humps.

Technology is overused. And only you can make a decision not to use it the way you do.

The other night I went out on a date. She didn’t look at her phone once. My god, it was so nice. When I sat down and we talked more, she said to me she doesn’t really do social media, and really didn’t do much on the Internet. I said sign me up. Will you be my girlfriend? I’m not saying technology is bad. It’s over used and abused.

Pretty soon, there will be a fucking group that will form. TAA, Technology Anonymous.

It is what it is, and only you can make the change. I don’t know about you, but I am connecting with people. It’s fun. I like my free cell phone minutes. Actually have a conversation. Technology is a gift. Stop abusing that gift.