I sit on a park bench and watch the ducks in the pond bob their heads up and down, under water and back up again. I don’t think I’ve actually seen that in person since I was feeding the ducks at seven years old. Forgot how hypnotising that was. A boy about my age walks past, I recognise him, but I’ve forgotten his name. That itch to reach for a device and look him up takes over, but I can’t do it, not today.
“Happy National No Internet Day!” He chimes, ambling past me, in a very jovial manner.
I nod my head in acknowledgement of his comment. Of course he’s happy. He’s that pretentious type who scoffs every time somebody takes out their phone in a social situation, and always has the disposition that he can’t wait to say the words ‘social media is for idiots’, and will proceed to lecture you on how we are simultaneously connected and unconnected from reality. He’s that type who has deleted his Facebook a month or so prior and now talks like he’s the prophetic figurehead of a millennial revolution.
What a pointless holiday.
A day without internet, to remember the times when we were more connected to the world around us and each other. No Facebook, no Instagram, no Twitter. Remember the good old days before these screen obsessed whippersnappers ruined it? It’s the same with every generation; we are programmed to disapprove of the one after. I can already feel myself start to hate how tech savvy post-millennials are…
I turn my head back to the ducks. I try to stare at those ducks for as long as I can, because society has preached to me and my peers, as being constantly distracted or in need of distraction, and that I can’t concentrate on anything that’s longer than six seconds long. Or 140 characters. Or a photograph.
Here’s the positives: I guess I don’t have to look at the self-indulgent pictures of my vain peers today, which flood my feed on a daily basis…well did I have to look through those in the first place? Hmm. I suppose not. I guess I didn’t have to keep scrolling, thinking about how everyone’s lives are better than my own, and how what’s-her-face is now pregnant with that ‘charming’ guy from my school who used to carve phallic images into the desks.
What are those ducks bobbing for? What are they looking for under water? Dipping their heads in and out; oblivious. Seems like a pointless exercise to me.
The sun is beginning to set. I wonder how many likes a photograph of that would get. How much instant social gratification I could get. Any picture of this sunset would get lost in the void of a million sunsets that have already happened, but none of them would be my experience. The live in the moment, carpe diem, versus the incessant need to document your life; don’t need to be at odds, I know how to be balanced.
Nevertheless, the desire to be distracted is an ingrained feeling I need to satisfy right at this moment, to prevent me thinking about what really matters in the world.
But let’s be honest, even the things that really matter have been watered down into entertainment (I’m thinking politics here). Is social media the problem, or is it us? Have we diluted one of the best parts of humanity, connecting with one another, into dead eyed mindless scrolling, until we get that dopamine rush from a single notification.
I’m beginning to relate to those ducks which are constantly bobbing their heads in and out of the water. It’s like me constantly scrolling through my social media feed, blankly, dipping in and out of my phone. Every thirty seconds without achieving a single-
-I really want to know why those ducks are doing that…I guess there’s always tomorrow.
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