BY ERICA GUSTAFSON, OPINION EDITOR
If I got a dime every time an adult over the age of 40 told me that “children and young adults today are always tied to their phones. They will never be able to survive a real job or enjoy the real world,” I would be rich. I know that I am not the only college student who hears this and is sick of it.
I will acknowledge that they are not wrong that the past few generations do spend more time on phones and screens compared to the older generations. However, have people ever really looked into things that could be adding to this observance.
People are taught. Younger children were not born with electronics automatically in their hands, but given these electronics as they learn how the modern world works. Who provides these electronics? Most electronics were developed in companies that started years ago and typically are provided by parents, guardians or authority figures. Even educational institutions are going paperless and increasing the number of electronics that children are exposed to daily.
Most of these individuals that expose children to these technologies are the ones making comments about how eyes are “glued” to the phones we hold in our hands. It creates a full circle.
There may be an issue with children and adults being somewhat “addicted” to their phones, but that can’t be fully blamed on those children.
Honestly, they don’t really know any better. That is how they grew up, and how they were taught that the world works. The immediate gratification of online connections, social media images as “reality” and social structure where connection to anything and everything is always superior.
Children and young adults of today are taught that using technological devices is absolutely necessary for growing up, and the age where children are first exposed is decreasing with the passing days.
This concept of people being taught also applies to many other things in life.
One of the largest being people are taught to hate. This concept has been disputed and expanded on for a large amount of the world’s history.
People are not born hating others for any personal aspect. We hardly know what a person is as we first are born. I will not go as far to say we are born “innocent,” only because there are controversies as to what that term actually means. However, we don’t enter this world automatically hating someone based on gender, cultural, biological or social factors.
People are taught hate. Growing children observe the world around them as a scientist would observe research conducted to make observations. Then, people develop morals, values, beliefs and biases.
The environment surrounding people in communities, schools, work and public areas impact and potentially influences how an individual may view others. The reason people hate others in today’s world is because they were originally taught to hate someone in their past.
Though we will never come to a point in time where people like everyone else on this planet, the idea of teaching people to hate one another needs to be observed more.
One of my favorite quotes about how people are taught to hate comes from Nelson Mandela.
Mandela says, “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”
