I believe that in many ways, modern life is hurting us more than helping us. Young people today seem to have it so easy. I hear people all the time complaining about how easy we have it today– particularly when it comes to parenting.
At first glance, it might seem like they are right. We have a world of knowledge at our fingertips, convenience everywhere we look, and we don’t even have to walk up the stairs anymore, thanks to escalators. It doesn’t even end there.
As far as parenting goes, we have thousands of books, can look up anything in a few seconds, and my favorite invention of modern parenthood– baby wraps and carriers, so I can have hands free and can still do things.
We might have social media to run to for opinions from people across the world, but how do we know who to listen to, and is there even a right answer all the time? I don’t believe there is. With social media comes immense pressure.
On top of having constant access to each other’s lives, we face the trials that come with the addictiveness of social media platforms. Granted, we do make the choices when it comes to how many platforms we use and how often we use them. However, they are designed to be addictive, and we all know this.
Yet, we continue to scroll, becoming stuck in a loop of feeling depressed, scrolling to stave off the sadness and ultimately resorting to sadness. We scroll through 15-second videos that destroy our attention spans, then wonder why we can’t even stay focused long enough to get through our day-to-day responsibilities. We stick our kids in front of screens instead of spending quality time with them and question their behavioral issues.
Modern “conveniences” don’t actually make life any easier. Sure, there are a lot of great things about living in our current time. We can connect with family and friends from far away. There are astounding advances in medical technology and we have a million things to try to make life easier.
However, in the long run, I don’t think these things make life easier. They make us lazier, harder to please and destroy our attention spans. We have sacrificed bearing discomfort for the sake of ease and efficiency.
In doing so, we have lost something crucial to our well-being: The willingness to be uncomfortable sometimes. This is an important part of character development that I believe we are losing to modern life. The truth is, we make so many things easier than we need to.
A little bit of hardship is good for people, and we should stop being so afraid of being challenged. Being uncomfortable fosters growth. I’m not saying we should all live miserably, but the ease of modern life has undeniably made us weaker, physically and mentally.
I believe that we’re all so much more exhausted sometimes than we’re willing to admit. Not because everything is so hard, but because we’ve made life feel so easy that we are no longer cut out for the demands of a 40-hour work week, raising a family and the social pressure to make it look effortless.
We are living in an age of anxiety manufactured by the ease of modern life and it is slowly killing our sanity, at the very least. We work constantly, try to do more and more, and ultimately feel overworked and unfulfilled.
It’s not easier because we don’t have to put in so much physical effort. It’s just more mentally draining. So no, regardless of how easy young people appear to have it, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows.
Now, remember to go do a dopamine detox, get off of your phone, get out in the sun, eat clean, exercise and go have a real conversation with someone.