Digital World — The Touch of Reality
21st Century is known for a lot of things, but without a doubt, one of our biggest accomplishments has been our life-changing technological advancements in the current digital world. Digitalization has been the biggest wave that has hit every single country all around the world. The world, as we know it, at the moment is highly immersed and dependent on technology and artificial intelligence, more so than we think we know.
Living in the digital world does sound quite convenient. Time-consuming hard tasks that would take hours even days to finish can be completed by one person sitting behind a laptop within a few hours if not minutes. From simple tasks such as grocery shopping to the most difficult and important calculations that can take us to space, everything can be done in a blink of an eye.
Not going to lie, the internet and devices like our cellphone and laptops do make our day-to-day lives much easier and happier, to the extent where we can no longer live a normal day without them.
In this new age, the virtual world is our new reality. But while we talk about realities, I do reminisce about the days when children would wait eagerly for the weekends just so they could spend all their day outside in the playground with friends. Times when the weather didn’t matter but laughter and time spent with close friends mattered more, more than sitting around at home all day looking at the screen while playing some video game. Now don’t get me wrong, I do like playing video games myself, but all I’m asking is do these children have any idea about what real friendship is? Or how memories are made when time is spent laughing along with friends or making silly jokes which will last with us till the end?
I know everyone keeps talking about the children and how the new digital era is harming them in many ways but have they taken a look at themselves? Today as I walk down a street and I can barely see someone who is not on their phone, or at a restaurant taking pictures of the food or taking selfies instead of enjoying the meal and the time they are spending with their loved ones. We got habituated to the digital world.
It shames me how limited our reality has become, how limited my reality has become. More than half of me exists in the virtual world now, all my bank details, my personal data, my hobbies, even most of my friends… It’s like we are losing ourselves into the virtual world more and more every day, and no one dares to complain, not yet.
It scares me to even think about what lies in the future. Life will of course keep on becoming easier and more convenient every day in the digital world. But the real fun, the real happiness, and achievement are in living a life full of hardships and challenges because every challenge leaves behind memory and experiences that we can’t store on the internet or on our phones, but in our minds and hearts. I believe hardships and how we overcome them define who we are, and a world without any problems or challenges isn’t a world worth it at all.
Digitalization is important without a doubt, but what we should remember and instill in our future generations that are to come, is to embrace our reality which we are losing our touch with.