Extinction

I reach for my phone before I even open my eyes and start my day. Am I even opening my eyes at all? How much more of my life could I regain if this little thing didn’t exist? How much more would I see?

How much of my memory would improve if I searched my cerebral bank of memories for information instead of pulling up another browser for the answers? How much would my attention span grow if I wasn’t scrolling seeking seconds of entertainment while losing hours?

We have lost ourselves in a vast world that exists on a screen. Using excuse after excuse to continue this way of life even though it is killing us. We rely on shortcuts to propel us forward and then complain that no one wants to work anymore.

Books gather dust because phones never leave hands. Eyes gloss over and miss moments around us because they never truly avert from the screen in front of them.

We watch the devastation it creates all around us. We read about it on our phones staring the problem in the face while disregarding the solution.

Anxiety ridden, depression drenched and still clinging to the cause of it all. We have lost ourselves to technology, justifying it by believing the lie that we need it to survive.

I wrote by hand for the first time in a while and my penmanship was barely legible. I sat in silence without a phone nearby and found myself feeling overwhelmed that I had missed something important, within five minutes.

We are erasing our abilities and skills and letting them be replaced by the programming of AI.

Eliminating ourselves, not in the way the movies depicted it. Not physical extinction but extinction of our minds.

This is an addiction that is debilitating, but the symptoms are socially acceptable and have gradually metastasized to a systemic level. The side effects are hidden so well no one is paying attention to the damage it has caused.

We are septic as a society. And we are asking the disease that made us this toxic to fix it for us.