(This post is comprised primarily of jumbled thoughts and unanswered questions. You've been warned.)
My Introduction to World Politics course frequently gets into wildly off-topic debates.
Case in point, last night. A 45-minute presentation was followed by an hour-long discussion that never really touched on the course's subject matter, but did include conversations regarding Catholic schools, soccer players who choose to play for the national team of a country other than the one they grew up in, and the year 1968.
Closer to the purpose of this particular post, we also spent a few minutes on the emergence of the Internet.
One of the lines that struck me the most was my professor noting that he couldn't hold the entire class's attention for even a few minutes, because somebody would start looking at their computer or their cell phone.
While this is undeniably true of most students, it isn't true of me - I very rarely bring my computer to class, and my cell phone even less often. This isn't meant to suggest that I'm somehow above the technology-embracers of my peers, just that there must be a different value system at play.
It's not important to me to be in instantaneous contact with my friends at all times. When I'm alone, sure, I'll at least be signed into MSN even if I'm not at my computer, but there are times when I don't think it's appropriate.
Example: I'm having a party here this weekend (if you have any idea where 'here' is, you're invited). Some people will just be coming up for an evening, some will be staying longer. I fully expect that at least a few of those staying longer will bring laptops with them - and those who don't, will likely spend a fair bit of time texting.
Why is it that these people feel a need to be in constant contact with people who aren't around them, when they have friends who are around them? If my parents were to spend a weekend at the cottage of friends of theirs, my mom would be completely isolated from anybody who wasn't also at the cottage, while my dad would check e-mail on his Blackberry every few hours, but that would be the extent of this. They don't see anything wrong with their behaviour. Neither do I (thus it's not completely a generational thing). Is it that people our age value friendships less?
(This isn't to say that there aren't significant advantages to having laptops in class and cell phones when you're on the go.)
Another idea I've thought of is that it's a byproduct of how we were raised. It sometimes feels like other people my age don't want to make any plans unless they know exactly when an event is going to start, when it is going to end, and exactly what they will be doing every moment between those two points.
I've read before that our generation was the first to really have strict, must-be-adhered-to schedules budgeting their time, possibly as a result of most families having both parents working. As a result, we're used to being told we have to be here at time X, then we move on to place Y at time Z. Then, suddenly, we're out living on our own, and we're still only used to that sort of incredibly-detailed schedule, with no idea how to make anything else work.
Thus, my theory goes, when people aren't doing anything specific, their first instinct is not to use their imagination to come up with something to do, but rather to text their friends and find out what they're up to, so that somebody else can do the thinking.
In another one of my classes, the professor has suggested that maybe spending so much of our time online isn't a bad thing - as long as it's replacing time that we would spend, say, watching television alone, as opposed to socializing with other people. I agree with this in theory, but the problem is that I don't think the assumption works in almost any case - online socializing is definitely replacing interpersonal socializing, at least from my perspective.
I'd like to hear from others on this. Am I making too big a deal out of all this? Is there nothing wrong with people occasionally focusing their attention on something other than what societal customs dictate it should be focused on? Are people still socializing in person as much, and I'm just picking up the extreme examples from the other end? Are we, in fact, going to be the best generation of adults ever because we were raised to not waste a moment of time?
--Ryan
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