I didn’t have a cell phone until I was a freshman in college. It may be hard for kids nowadays to comprehend, but that was the case.
My roommate and I had a landline telephone in our dorm room with an answering machine. It was crazy. We actually had to wait until we got home to see who had called.
I was almost 19 years old and I bought myself a Nokia “brick” for Christmas. There was nothing smart about cell phones back then, and I’m not sure how smart of a buy it was for me at the time.
But I forked over the several hundred-dollar deposit required for a kid with no credit history and took home the green-screened wonder that came fully equipped with the game Snake.
Part of my late arrival to the cell phone revolution was just the time in which I grew up. I’ll turn 42 later this month, so you can do the math.
Cell phones weren’t affordable or plentiful when I was coming of age in the 1990s, and (looking back) I think that was okay.
We were still able to date girls, have friends, do our homework, make weekend plans and find new places (without a GPS) — all without the help of a smart phone.
I see kids going to elementary school with the devices and it makes me question how wise this really is.
Beyond just smart phones, we grew up without social media. Again, probably hard for kids to imagine.
There was no stalking people on Facebook or Instagram. If we wanted to get to know someone, we had to stalk them in person. It was called “meeting new people.”
Back then, social networks were coffee shops, cafes, bars, football games, the library basement where folks would go to study and gossip — it was wonderful. I am afraid all of this connectivity is leaving us less connected.
I didn’t join Facebook until September 2016. I held out as long as I could and I realized, going into it, that it could become a huge time waster.
Admittedly, more often than not, it is.
Now, I have more than 2,200 “friends” and I am not sure who some of them are. While social media could be one of the greatest breakthroughs of our time, it is damaging us, too.
Name calling on someone’s feed has replaced a good conversation over a cup of coffee.
Yelling at someone online has replaced organized town hall meetings.
And ‘getting my news from Facebook’ has replaced an appetite for good journalism from community newspapers.
None of these trades are equitable.
As I look ahead to 2025, I will resolve to get back to how things were all those years ago— a little less screen time and a little more book time; a little more conversation and a little less online scrolling; and a little more turning off the phone and turning on the mind.
I invite you to join me. The coffee will be on me. The conversation will be free.
Austin Lewter is the owner and publisher of the Whitesboro News-Record. He can be reached at [email protected].
Source: Freepik.com