It's probably that I mentioned this in the past, or not, but this blog was intended to be a tech oriented one. Actually I was aiming to cover with my Steem posts all sorts of tech related articles, and particularly targeting the smartphones world. I am an android user for years and I am quite a geek when it comes to smartphones, thus I could have uploaded tons of related posts. Not on a spam manner though...
I didn't, because I felt like there wasn't too much audience for it. When I got to Steemit in February 2018, it was actually in the beginning of the bear market, almost nobody knew that though, including myself. We were expecting a rebound of the prices and landing on the moon. That didn't happened, but I considered at that time that I should post more about crypto, since everybody was into it, and I also thought diversity is the key for this platform. That's why my blog never become a tech oriented one.
I mentioned about phones though, in this long introduction, because that's what I want to talk about, for the most part of this freewrite, and I will begin with my first one. The NOKIA 3310, bought second hand, from some dude I didn't know at that time, and I still remember date that it costed me about $30. Being a two years old phone at that time, and a heavy one, wearing a NI-MH battery, it would swing my pocket like I was carrying a tennis ball, if I would step up the walking tempo a bit. I was owning a mobile phone though.
A though one, tested by yours truly, in all sort of conditions, dropping it, throwing it, and disassembling it multiple times. It refused to brake and it accompanied me throughout my high school years. Not all four of them, because I bought in the tenth grade, but only after I got to college I bought myself a new one. Those were the glory times of electronics, when you wouldn't have to brake the bank, to hold a phone in your pocket and you wouldn't have to buy a new one every year either.
Kids nowadays don't know how it is to own a NOKIA 3310, a brick in your pocket that can make you calls, send texts and help you kill time with boring games, and they don't consume properly what they hold in their pockets either, tech bought with parent's money of course. I bought mine with my own money, earned from fishing, but in my country kids are not encouraged to work at early ages, and are not stimulated to learn how to earn. Although we live in a country rocking a pretty weak economy...
None the less, they don't even imagine owning a phone for two or three years, because they get outdated and their friends will make fun of them if they don't own some latest model. They get bullied they say... I hate this term but even in my country it's being used so I'm using it as well. In this situations I guess that bullying goes well, as long as you will accept it. If some bozo makes fun of you for owning a two years old smartphone model it's your fault for paying attention. This type of bulling is under your control and you shouldn't stress your parents with extra expenses every year...
What about smoking at an early age though? Well, although I've been a teenager once, I never smoked. I mean, I tried, but never become a regular customer of cigarettes companies. Back then, there were quite a few, pretty much the same age as I, that were smoking, but not that many as nowadays. It wasn't that much of a problem, smoking, for that time.
Now, I hear high school teenagers that they can't quit smoking, and that they should try with e-cigarettes... Really?! You don't even own a driving license and you can't overcome the smoking addiction? What are you going to do when you'll be 40 or 50 years old?... As time covers your head with more grey hair, you're gonna end up with more and more addictions that you can imagine. And e-cigarettes are no legit alternative for sure.
I know I started from phones and ended with cigarettes, but I wanted to point out in this post, how the consumer society is affecting us at every age, and how different the new generations are when comparing them with... mine for example. Having a wide palette of choice for anything one can imagine, and access to too many intoxicating substances and ideas from an early age, makes kids nowadays more addicted than us, adults, and more addicted then kids were twenty years ago.
Back then, we had $30 phones, and no unlimited voice calls plans, no internet, but we were communicating much more than we/they do now, we had a handful of t-shirts per summer, but we were collecting tons of experiences after a whole summer vacation, we were slow, but we were happy... Now they got smartphones that are more expensive than my fishing gear, closets that are full of fashioned clothes but... ask them what they did this summer, and they'll have to open Facebook to remember.
Hence my question for the day is: are we really evolving, as the human kind, or are we just becoming more and more desensitized and addicted to plastics? I feel like, no matter how expensive the life becomes, year after year, it seems like failing to fulfill us big time. It's probably that we allow too much stuff stealing our attention and energy from the things that truly matter, causing us to have become a world full of unsatisfied avid consumers. We're probably searching joy and fulfillment in the wrong direction, and kids are doing the same, but on a higher pace... Shouldn't we do something about that?
Thanks for attention,
Adrian
