Sam is a 19 years old boy studying in college. It is
Tuesday today and college is open. The alarm wakes him up at 7:00 am. He checks
the cell phone and snoozes the alarm. After 10 minutes he dreadfully wakes up.
Lying on the bed, he connects the phone with the Wi-Fi. His time of being unplugged from the web and social media has ended for the day.
He opens Facebook where he received 374 likes and 23 comments on his last post of “going to bed” status at 1:30 am. He staggers to the bathroom and brushes his teeth. While brushing he open Snapchat where a friend has sent a funny video of people falling down while working.
Putting his earphones, glued his eyes on the screen of his cell phone he sits down on the breakfast table. Before eating anything, he
clicks a photo of fried egg, bread with tea, and posted on Instagram with an
emoji of licking lips. Without looking at his parents, he went to his room. His
mother told him something from which he only listens ‘bathroom’ and ‘book’
while listening to the music.
When he came out of the room to go to college, he almost stumbles with his mother. He gave the book to his mother. She told him to remove his earphones. “Don’t you listen to me, Sam?” He replies angrily “Yes, I heard you. I can do multitask. I can listen to music and still get things done. I got your book and I don’t have to go to the bathroom.” She informed him that she had asked him to put the books on the shelf and turn off the light of the bathroom which he left on. Sam shrugs, drags to his room, and does what his mother asks him to do.
He goes to school with his friends on the bus where
most of them were fled to their cell phones and very few are having
conversation with each other.
Entering the college gate, he checks Tweeter and finds that his two friends are also heading towards college and dreading it with a hashtag “#SkoolSux”.
In the first class, Sam and most of his fellows kept their
phones to their laps and checks them every few seconds without giving a clue to
the teacher. They all are well trained in hiding the phone.
His attention goes towards two students who were trying to impress their teacher by reciting the element of Periodic Table. They stumbled on the 37th element. They started debating whether it is Rubidium or Strontium.
Sam takes a break from a video on YouTube. He goes to Google for the 37th element. “It is Rubidium” Sam speaks loudly. “Nice work Sam.” The teacher responds. Sam again gets back to the video feeling pretty happy that he knows something the others did not.
At break time he hangout with his friends at the
basketball court playing not basketball but an online game along with his
friends. For the whole thirty minutes they can't stop stearing on their cell phones. Their game was interrupted by a bell, calling off the break time.
In the day’s final period the Physics teacher asks to
write a note of Newton’s 3rd Law of Motion. Sam opens Google and
types Newton’s Laws of Motion in the search box. The first 5 links are either
about the 1st Law or the 2nd Law of Motion. He quickly feels that
there is nothing on the internet about 3rd law of motion and informs
the teacher about his effort. “You are telling me that there is absolutely
nothing on the Internet about one of the most important laws of Physics” the Teacher
replied getting surprised. Sam responds “I know. I couldn’t believe it,
either.” After a quick search, the teacher said “I came up with almost three-quarters of a million hits about Newton’s 3rd Law of Motion". Sam
promises to do it at home and focuses back on his phone watching a funny cat
video on the story of Instagram of his friend.
He takes a selfie of himself “sleeping” and sends the
54th Snap of the day. He also receives over 70 all day.
After lunch, Sam goes to his laptop where his group of three other friends going to a war with enemies in the game PUBG. The war continues till 9:00 pm with a number of battles on different battlefields most of which, they are winning and few losses by getting killed by the enemy squad.
At dinner, Sam's earphones are not in, but his phone is right next to him. As his parents talk, Sam is responding to the message of his friend on WhatsApp. Slightly annoyed, Sam’s mother bashes him to put the phone away. “Why do you always want me to stay away from connecting with people?” For Sam responding to the messages and playing games online with friends is the social interaction. He stares down for the rest of dinner, feeling isolated from his family and socially connected with friends.
After dinner, it’s time for homework. He switches on the laptop and searches on Google the Newton’s 3rd Law of Motion. He logs into an online math book to solve 4 problems. He also opens multiple tabs for Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. He is already online to Snapchat, Instagram, and WhatsApp from his cell phone.
Two assignments take him 4 hours; 30 minutes to do
work and 210 minutes of responding to friends on Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram,
WhatsApp and Twitter. He doesn’t like it so much time, but his friends expect him
to respond immediately when they post something amazing, and everything they
post is amazing.
At almost 11pm his mother comes to his room. She finds
her son with earphones in, busy o the laptop where a tab of 3rd law
of motion was opened. Poor Hardworking kid, she thinks in her own mind as she
closed the door without disturbing him. He has to do four hours of daily
homework. I don’t know how does he do it.
Eventually, he takes out his headphone, brushes his teeth, and crawls to his bed. Before sleeping he checks his Snapchat and Instagram. He
updated his status on Facebook “Time for bed. Today Sukt.”
In about 5 hours he will do it all again. His digital clock says 1:30 am.
It is a digital world. It is Sam, a Digilearner. We
all know him and we also know about his female counterpart Sierra. They both
exist and their number is increasing.
This is Shocking. It's Alarming. What are today's kids doing? If proper steps are not taken in reducing screen time, the future generation will be the dumbest ones.
Think about it. Be the first one to take some serious actions. Start it now before getting too late.
nice
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