Words by: Lizzie Tooth
Art by: Jasper Kidman 

I’d like to preface this article by saying I am a hypocrite.

Although I wish and try my best not to succumb to the technological advancements of the early 2000s, I am no better than everyone else around me.

Now, what is it that’s got me all heated you might ask?

They have spread across the globe like a plague, infecting the daily lives of approximately 90% of the population, and in the hands of almost all Australian teens. They are the ultimate global pandemic. 

It’s none other than our beloved mobile phones.  

Don’t get me wrong, mobile phones are incredibly useful. Our current society, including myself, wouldn’t be able to function without them. They provide us with directions, reminders, communication and an untold number of other things depending on what apps we have downloaded. They save lives, preserve memories and make the quality of life better and more efficient for a lot of users.  

My qualm with them is that we never put them down. 

Like me, you probably start your day with an alarm from one of these delightful devices. I can’t say how the rest of your day pans out but I’d assume hitting snooze on said device isn’t the last time you’ll be using it. 

I see groups of people at restaurants with phones in their hands, texting and scrolling instead of interacting with the people around them. I see individuals on, or walking to and from, public transport, with their eyes glued to their devices. I see fingers in a permanent doom-scrolling motion, with hollow eyes scanning emotionlessly. I see babies watching videos, and adults not watching babies. I see friends together physically but not mentally. I see society’s knowledge and opinions shaped by their algorithm. I see a generation so chronically online that we don’t know how to interact in real life. 

I see the world through a screen and I don’t like what I see. 

This situation is almost certainly due to the multitude of social media applications we all have downloaded. We share tweets on X, memes on Reddit, life stories on Snapchat, and inspiration on Pinterest. YouTube has shorts now, because people can’t concentrate long enough to watch a full fifteen-minute video. We have an excessive amount of communication applications, from WhatsApp to Facebook Messenger, that all do the same thing. We turned BeReal into BeFake and lost our beloved Vine. We spend hours reading, responding and deleting emails from our one or multiple accounts. For doom-scrolling purposes, we have our big three, Facebook, Instagram and the infamous TikTok, in which we have clips of games to distract us from our videos. These apps captivate us, yet leave us with an overall feeling of nothingness. 

So no, I’m not a fan of mobile phones and what we choose to use them for. 

We might have the world at our fingertips, but in doing so, we miss the world right in front of us.