There’s Technology Under My Bed

For any of you out there who might actually have actually noticed that I haven’t posted a blog for awhile, I have meant to, but it has been difficult with not having a computer at home. This posting might help explain why.

There’s a children’s book entitled “There’s a Monster Under My Bed.” I remember reading it when I was young, and since then I have read it while babysitting. The story is pretty much what the title explains. There’s a little boy who continually believes that there is a monster living beneath his bed. He cries for his mom to come into his room proclaiming that he is certain that there is a monster living beneath his bed. Each time his mom enters the room, turns on the light and shows the boy that there really isn’t a monster under his bed, it’s just his imagination. But each time she leaves the room and turns off the light he is once again convinced that there really a monster under his bed.

I can relate with this little boy. Not about a monster under my bed, but about technology. I have an unfounded fear of technology. Not the kind of fear that my grandma has: that using technology is scary, or that the internet is scary. But, more the fear of what this growth in technology is doing to our culture, to our daily lives, to our relationships. I feel like whenever I try to express this fear to anyone it is as if I am that little boy with a monster under his bed. People want to just come in my room, turn on the light, look under the bed and say, “Meghan, how can computers and cell phones and pocket PC’s and TVs really be that bad. They are just helping us do things more easily. They are speeding up the rate at which we can learn and get information. They are for our convenience not our demise. We rule them, they don’t rule us.” From what I’ve seen, I feel that it is much the opposite.

Here’s what I see. I see people slowly becoming more isolated and fragmented than ever. Lives being lived apart from the life itself. Everywhere you look people are running away from their own lives and technology is the road they are using. I see families where each member has their own computer and TV where they spend all their time. I see kids who spend more time in front of their computer screen than with their parents talking. I am in the grocery store, or the airport, or the bank and no longer do I have to deal with the annoyance of actually talking to another person because there is a much more convenient computerized kiosk. I see a whole generation of people being defined by the hours they spend each day in front of the TV. I see the way MTV and other media have warped the mind of a teenage girl into believing that starving herself is the only way she will ever be good enough.

Cell Phones. They deserve a paragraph of their own. I have to tell this story. About a year ago I was with my mom and sister visiting an old friend in her assisted living apartment. Her husband was about to die. She sat with us talking about her life, her marriage, how much she loved her husband, and how afraid she was about his impending death. As she sat there in tears my mom’s cell phone rang….AND SHE ANSWERED IT!!!!!!!!! I was so upset. She’s definitely not the only one to blame. Since when did it become ok to sacrifice these moments of relational vulnerability for some dumb call from my brother asking if he could use the car. Or, on a much less serious note, when did it become ok to answer your cell phone while out to dinner, talking with a friend, in line a the grocery store, at church, in an art museum, and so on and so on. A lot of people get really frustrated and even mad at me for not answering my cell phone. I can understand their frustration, but when I signed up for my cell phone plan I didn’t realize I was also signing up to be available at the exact moment when anyone wanted to get a hold of me.

I definitely understand that there are some amazing things happening in this world because of technological advances. I am also aware that I probably wouldn’t even be in touch with half of the people I am now without e-mail. But that doesn’t mean that all the rest of this stuff is excusable. Through the rapid growth of technology I feel we haven’t taken time to understand it’s role in our lives. We’ve just let it take over. Whether technology is a monster living under my bed, I guess only time will really tell.