Life spent online is now no life at all…
ARE WE raising a new generation to be incorrectly informed and square-eyed? I hope not but fear it may be. What I refer to is the uncheckable but apparently large percentage of the under-25s who spend most of their lives staring at a small handheld screen.
The other day I was on a train and down the length of the carriage was sepulchrous silence. Row after row of passengers most of them young, sitting in silence staring.
Not at the countryside rolling by nor at each other as they conversed. Each had attention only for what was in the palm of a hand. A second question worries me.
If 90 per cent of the information they have about the world all around us comes from that gizmo, is it accurate and true? Not necessarily, though I understand it is all faithfully believed.
What is online can easily be utter garbage. It was the Post Office computer that accused hundreds of sub-postmasters of being cheats and thieves.
For 20 years the numbnuts who run the PO believed the machine. Many lives were ruined but the computer had malfunctioned. It simply “lost” millions of pounds in cyberspace. The honest sub-postmasters had nothing to do with it.
Within the same week I heard the truly awful story of two parents who found their once-lively daughter hanging by the neck. She was 14, bright, pretty and with a great life to look forward to. But some damned app had persuaded her life was horrible and how to end it.
Two generations ago we had not a fraction of the technological advantages of the present under-25s but we were taught life was for the living. It was a gift, a privilege and to try and make it a good one. Which, despite the Korean War, Cold War, Vietnam War, Falklands War and two Iraq wars, the IRA and IS terrorists, rising crime and economic crises, we did.
Despite the problems the world has become more and more prosperous, its younger folk better endowed. But has it made them happier, with their palm pilots and smart phones? I wish I could say it had, but I do not see it.