Technology, An evil we can't live without

Let me take you back to the ’70s, maybe you existed, maybe not. The technology was in the invention and the internet was not a vocabulary in anyone's lip at the time. Social networking was more of having face to face talks in a field and or silent locations. The much you could hear were children playing with less hooting and no TV at all. Meetings were physical and news could move from one person to the other authentically. Life seemed around family, friends and other physically accessed services. Our ties were stronger and better.

A research by Smith Kirsten P, Christakis Nicholas A. Social Networks and Health. Annual Review of Sociology. 2008;34:405–29 maintains that “Social relationships both quantity and quality affect mental health, health behavior, physical health, and mortality risk”. Is that why we never had Viral hate across the globe? Is it why family ties were stronger? Did the age of no internet mean fewer diseases and addictions to behavior sets turned to vice?.

Our thirst to increase productivity and lower the operational cost made the inventions a need and a possibility. Of cause everyone needs efficiency. By the click of a button things happen, sales are done, decisions made, communication reached, purchase done, learning done, among many others.

However, as we are much into the “button age”, it has is a fact that, the internet has brought the world closer but at the same time sending our real world away. A study by global tech protection and support company Asurion found that the average person struggles to go a little more than 10 minutes without checking their phone. And of the 2,000 people surveyed, one in 10 check their phones on average once every four minutes. What does this mean on our family health? If dinner is for one hour, every 10 Min people will be on their phones. What are they up to on their phones that take away the joy of the moment?

Communication between parents to their kids has also gone online, where the parents are trying to catch up with the kids to a point that they are friends on social networks and are in common groups where some are very sensitive to the growth of the kids. In kenya alone according to CAK quarterly sector report for July to September 2017, the demand for data/Internet continues to soar, with the number of estimated data/Internet users jumping by 12.5 percent to post 51.1 million users compared to 45.4 million users reported in the previous quarter.

However, as we struggle to understand how to strengthen our family ties, Let's think of going to the basics and notice that a skype call to your mother does not show importance, visiting your kids at school while you are always on the phone does not show that you visited them and finally calling friends and family for a vacation and or a party only for everyone to be taking photos of the food, posting online and following keenly on the likes does not mean anything as far as family ties are concerned. The big question still stands.

Which Way Now?

“We are continually being nudged by our devices toward a set of choices. The question is whether those choices are leading us to the life we actually want. I want a life of conversation and friendship, not distraction and entertainment; but every day, many times a day, I’m nudged in the wrong direction. One key part of the art of living faithfully with technology is setting up better nudges for ourselves.” ― Andy Crouch, The Tech-Wise Family: Everyday Steps for Putting Technology in Its Proper Place