This may be an extremely popular opinion, (especially among the young people), and I’ll surely be showing my age with this one. Some of us may have to agree to disagree and I’m OK with that.

The technology I would be better off with is a smartphone. Before you get mad at me, hear me out: smartphones are great: on the farm, I use them to track temperatures in our greenhouse, activate our water irrigation system, check on our animals via camera, identify unknown plants and insects with Google Lens, and take lots of pretty pictures. BUT there is always a negative.

Smartphones can be a serious time drain for me. I love browsing social media, watching videos on YouTube, and talking to people. I also love  playing games (Tetris fans represent!)  and disappearing down rabbit holes on Reddit. I have learned  that I need to manage my smartphone time so that it does not run away from me.

I  was born right smack in the middle of the ’80’s, and if you’re a mathematician, you’ve probably gathered that I am in the nearing 40/freshly forty crowd (where are my fellow x-ennials?), and I can vividly remember a time without smartphones. We had video games, but we also had active imaginations and we played outside.  We had TV but we  weren’t glued to it. We had plenty of fun without a phone.

Today, I’m the mother of a teen and a tween, and a middle school teacher. I can tell you that I see a lot of negative affects on our young people today that I believe are due, at least somewhat, to smartphones.  Kids are used to having a whole information gateway at their fingertips, which means that they’re less used to thinking and figuring things out. Their attention spans are at an all time low. Anxiety in  children seems to be increasing by the moment. Children also seem to be  less imaginative than they used to be.

I’m not saying smartphones are even ALL bad- they have their place and they give us the ability to do some neat things…but like most things, they’re perfectly alright in moderation. Could I live without one? Sure. It might be hard  at first, but once I got used to it, I don’t think I’d miss it.