Confessions of an Addict

One thing I am excited/scared about for my three months in the field is the inevitable lack of technological connection I will have access to. When I think about losing Facebook, texting, blogs, Pinterest, etc, it may sound pathetic, but it is like I will suddenly be going cold turkey as a smoker after being used to three packs a day. I can honestly say I am addicted to the Internet and my cell phone. Although I'm not alone, as I'm pretty sure most other kids at BYU are also addicted, it is still humbling when you fully realize you have succumbed to a dependency on an inanimate object external to your body. I wonder what it will be like having these things abruptly stripped away for 90 days - probably one of the better things that will ever happen to me.

While pondering this, I have also thought about how as an American, middle class teen I have just fully accepted technological saturation as a natural part of life. For many Ghanaians this is not the case, as well as for the vast majority of the rest of the world. I wonder how this dichotomy of technological exposure makes my life experiences different from those who do not experience mass technology. I know from sociology classes that our social interactions are drastically different in a lot of ways. These types of differences can be seen among Americans between mere generations. However, I wonder if this difference in experience also causes variations in perception, time value, definitions of place, etc. For example, maybe Ghanaians would see it as utterly boring to sit and scroll through Pinterest for an hour, while many American girls find this a great source of entertainment. Or maybe an American boy views his online teammates in a video game to be better friends than the people he physically interacts with at school, a concept that Ghanaians may not be able to relate with. Basically, it is just crazy how although we are all human, what we actually define as the human experience can vary so drastically.