Maddisyn+T’s+Final+AmEx+Speech+2017

As a kid, my life was outside. I patiently, or not so patiently waited for the sun to come up every morning, shoved my Pillsbury cinnamon rolls down my throat, threw some raggedy clothes on and my old tattered sneakers, and ran out the door. As conscientious and generous as I was, I’d go knocking on my neighbors doors, making them extremely aware that it was time to play. We would spend the day up in trees, pretending to live in the jungle, and we would ride our scooters down the green belt along my neighborhood and meet up with the kids from 6 streets over. The dark meant nothing to us, sometimes it made our games more interesting. I would hold my pee in until I got to the point where I would explode because I knew that as soon as my mom heard me come inside she would say “okay Madi, time to come in”. EVERY SINGLE TIME! The more chilly or rainy days didn’t stop our creative minds from taking us to another reality. When we had to improvise we would go to my backyard under the deck and play school or we would take every bit of clothing out of my closet and hang things around the room as I sat behind a barbie cash register as if we were running a fashion boutique. As I got a little older, our outdoor shenanigans got a little more risky. We would climb down the hidden path leading to the strawberry fields off my neighborhood and when the workers weren’t looking, we would run as fast as we could down to the rows and rows of strawberries, picking as quickly as our fingers would allow, and then hearing the spine-chilling “Hey!” as one of the workers spotted us and ran to get his BB gun. As long as it is taking me to spit it out, my point is that when we were growing up, we still had a desire to be outside, experiencing things first hand from an early age. Now a days I have found that most kids prefer to stay in doors with their noses buried in their screens, unaware of what the outside world, better known as reality, has to offer. Progress in technology is inevitable, but that doesn’t surmount to progress on a humane scale. If anything, I see technology forcing us down a path where we become less civilized. I am sure some of you have seen the commercial for AT&T where Mark Wahlberg advertises unlimited data to watch anything you want, anywhere you want, anytime you want. It shows people walking down the street in New York (or wherever it takes place) while watching movies on their phones, and families huddled in closets because they decided they needed a TV in there as well. I hate that commercial. Not for a second did I feel persuaded to get unlimited data, but I felt almost disgusted by what we have come to and makes me really scared for the future. The movie Wall-E is becoming closer and closer to our reality. Fat people sitting in moving chairs with screens projected in front of them, talking about playing virtual golf, because who in their right mind would play something that required them to get off their asses, completely oblivious to anything that actually matters. Now sure, technology has made huge advancements in medicine and in ways that we can greatly benefit, but is a smart home where the fridge tells the microwave what to make so that when you get home from work, you have a meal waiting for you really necessary? Or the fridge taking inventory and ordering groceries for you when it realizes it is low on something something that will be good for us? Have we become so busy doing other things that we can’t make our own toast in the mornings because that is just way too much to have on your plate? We need to slow down. We have gotten so busy, so preoccupied with other things that studies have shown that approximately 7% of our communication is verbal, that is it. The whole 93% left is nonverbal, over text, email, etc. We don’t talk to each other anymore, not like people used to because everyone is online. Our real lives have become boring to us. The things we see on social media and youtube or shows, they are far more interesting than what we actually do, so why would we do anything? We can’t think that way, we have to power off our screens and do something because it is only getting worse. Little kids are starting out at age 2 with their mom’s iphone in their tiny little hands, permanently damaging their brains. From birth to age 3 is the critical years, where the most brain development happens for children and forms the foundation for neurodevelopment for the rest of their life. However, due to the increase in their early involvements with technology, this period is stunted and kids are having a hard time focusing, concentrating, sensing attitudes and communications, and building larger vocabularies, all cognitive growth is damaged. A lack of human interactions in early childhood can also hurt their frontal lobe development, responsible for the ability to empathize, read facial expressions, nonverbal cues, and tone of voice. We will become expressionless, lazy zombies if we continue on this path. Albert Einstein said, “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity”. That was at a time far less advanced than now, imagine what he would say if he saw where technology has taken us today? Technology can be a great tool. I believe that it will be a great tool, but first we have to learn how to use it properly. We have a lot of power in what we can do with technology, but we don’t understand it enough to limit ourselves to where it can used to its full potential. We shouldn’t be moving down a path where we can no longer speak to one another, especially if it is because we no longer know how to communicate to members of our own species. “The great myth of our times is that technology is communication” - Libby Larsen. It’s not. We no longer represent the true versions of ourselves. We are given the opportunity to become someone completely different when we can do it hiding behind a screen. When did this become okay? When did it become a social norm for kids to ridicule other kids online? Subtweets, for example, have become a big way people communicate frustrations with each other instead of telling them personally. And instead of personal issues being personal, every one of your 600 followers gets to see what’s happening in your life, because all everyone does is tweet their every thought. I’m getting kind of off the main topic, but what I really want to see in the America I grow old in, is that people still have imaginations. I want to see kids playing in the front yard, far, far away from the dang TV and their phones. Because when I was little, my imagination is what I thrived off of. Everything had potential to play a part in my story book of a mind, that was the magic of my childhood. But that is fleeting. I want us to learn how to use our advancements to do things that we as humans are not capable of, instead of using it to do things we already can do, but are too lazy to do ourselves. My America has our little black mirrors facing down on the table in the other room, while we sit together, talking, sharing, connecting, finally present in the moment. I know there was once a time where road rage wasn’t a thing. People weren’t in such a hurry to get everywhere. I want to see technology make us less stressed as a society. It seems that our so-called improvements have made us miserable. Always running from point A to point B. I hope to see us slow down, bring back that “we will get there when we get there” attitude. I wanna see teenagers have the option to take a night off and have a little fun without hyperventilating because they remembered they have a physio test the next day and four hours of homework sitting on the table waiting for them. I hope to see an America where kids don’t have to choose what career they want for the next 50 years at age 16. I want to live in an America where kids can be kids, parents can leave their work at work, where home means family time, leave the stress at the front door and hopefully there isn’t much of it. The America I want to grow old in is a place where people aren’t fishing for a debate over whether or not a teacher was being racist for wearing a grill while pretending to be a rapper for Air Guitar; where people can give a presentation in class without kids sitting in front saying “no, that’s not correct” while shaking their heads, blatantly disrespecting the presenter; where people aren’t constantly being hypocritical; and where people can have a difference of opinion and be heard, not shot down. My ideal America is nothing like it is now. One thing I have noticed is that no matter what age group you talk to, each one would tell you that they want to go back in time. They each miss something about their past that made it seem so much better than where we are today. What does that tell you? If everyone misses how things were before, then why do we continue to go further into a reality that no one likes? We are going backwards. My America is a place we can all finally be happy with where we are in the present. Where we no longer yearn for the past, because where we are now, is even better.