What objects tell the story of your life?

  Pixels. LED displays. Hundreds of thousands of points of light cycling on and off thousands of times a minute. Flashing, blinking, emitting. Informing, but deeply separating. A life unfulfilled, experienced through a screen.

My introduction to modern electronics came early enough in my life that I can’t really remember the first time I realized “Hey, I’m watching a thing that isn’t really there. Isn’t that nifty?” I guess I was good with object non-permanence as a child. But I do remember when my dad got my younger brother and I an iPad (to share) when I was 6 or 7, which we were allowed to play Minecraft on and as long as we got adult permission and supervision. I didn’t quite understand the necessity of the rigamarole required to use the iPad at the time - I was just playing a silly block game after all. Were my parents really worried about me abusing that privilege? 

When I was about 9, I acquired the luxury of my own iPad. This one was shiny and new, and came with a “photo booth” app that my brother and I would use to take pictures of one another using the filters (our favorite was the one that stretches the image in the x direction, making your face look really fat). Again, I had a time limit set on the iPad for games, but was allowed to spend as much time reading on it as I wanted - a privilege that I took full advantage of. The entire literary world was suddenly at my fingertips. Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, all the classic YA novels were mine. I didn’t stop there. Inspired by a class assignment, I began teaching myself (very, very poorly) to write. I unlocked new means of creativity and imagination. Could I have done this on pencil and paper? Absolutely, but the ease with which I was able to peck at keys, search synonyms, and of course, read like there was no tomorrow was unparalleled by the physical world.

When I came to Uni, I was finally privileged with my own computer. Unrestricted internet access was mine. And, surprisingly, nothing went horribly awry. Sure, I downloaded some games now and then to play on weekends, and I’ll admit to have checked discord and played minesweeper while I maybe should’ve been working, but nothing egregious happened. I feel like there’s a common misconception that young people with this kind of freedom will stumble upon something awful - a beheading video, drugs for sale, or “adult content” and would be traumatized for the rest of their lives, but none of that really happened to me or anyone I know. Instead, a more long-term illness took root. 

I began to forget and I began to rely. Certain events whose name I will not invoke exacerbated these issues, but I would argue that I began relying on the internet before they took place, and would have to a similar degree had they not happened. Regardless, I was forced into my room and 18 inches in front of a screen for 10+ hours a day in order for daily life to operate. I won’t argue against this specifically; it’s a miracle of science that we were able to maintain some semblance of “normal” during the times we did, but being forced onto a computer has consequences. “I should write that down” turned into “I should type that somewhere” which turned into “I’ll look that up if I can’t remember”.  

Like a crutch, I always seem to need a device nearby. When discussing technology, most people tend to criticize the toxicity and addictiveness of social media but praise the unlimited access of information it provides. But I’d argue that we all need to be wary of our habits; we are the first guinea pigs to have grown up with this kind of access to technology, and we may all suffer because of it.

-William King