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The Rotunda Online
The Rotunda
Monday, July 7, 2025

Sorry, Can't Talk Right Now

Money where does it go

The internet will probably be the death of us. And cell phones. I used to think television, but suddenly that seems less and less harmful. I get on my computer every day. I check my Facebook, I check my e-mail, and then I surf. I look up new songs on YouTube, I check out Tweets from famous people who don't know I even exist, I check out the news from AOL or Google, I see what tomorrow's weather is going to be like- and the list continues, because I can do most anything, look up anything, on the internet. That said, I'm not addicted to Facebook and I don't enjoy wasting hours of my life looking up unimportant things. But I know some people who do, and I know there is little to nothing that I can say to get them off.

Facebook came after MySpace, as most everyone knows. It was invented by Mark Zuckerberg in a college dorm at Harvard in the summer of 2004. How do I know this? Well, first I Googled it, but I also went and saw the movie they made about it. The rest is history. I only know a handful of people who don't have a Facebook, and I actually find that I applaud them for resisting the lure of addiction. They don't know what all their friends are doing at this exact moment in time or where they went for the weekend based off their newly posted pictures, and I think that's a good thing. Our world, instead of moving away from such things as instant gratification and unrealistic standards, has only been immersed in it.

I've fallen victim to it. You made plans with your friend. She texts you to tell you that she can't hang out anymore because of some emergency or another. Twenty minutes later she's posted her status on Facebook as "hanging out with Sarah." The only problem? Your name isn't Sarah. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has found out they've been lied to through a list of electronics without ever having to talk to the person. That's another problem. Texting.

Texting didn't originally take off because networks were unable to connect to one another; for example, an AT&T costumer could not text a Verizon costumer without being charged, and even then the message might never make it to the intended recipient. But once that issue was solved, texting exploded. Companies created phones with built-in keypads that allowed the younger population the ability to text one another with ease. They also created built-in plans which allowed costumers to send as many texts as they wanted without being charged for going over. And just like that the world was a different place. 1.5 trillion text messages were sent or received in 2009 alone. That's an average of 5 billion text messages that were sent and received a day. How did I find all that out? I Googled it.

A few weeks back I went out to lunch with my younger sister. She is still in high school and I was excited to talk to her about how things were back at home. We started to eat. Her phone buzzed. She picked it up, slashed out a sentence in five seconds flat, and put down her phone. We started to talk. Her phone buzzed again. Same deal. But this time she didn't put it down because it had buzzed again as she was typing. I waited. Half an hour later I had finished eating and we had hardly spoken. We walked out together, her carefully treading as she typed. I found out later that she had been talking to four different people and she hadn't even had to use her voice. This isn't the first time this had happened and I'm sure it won't be the last, but that doesn't stop me from being annoyed. When did something as simple as a conversation with someone's full attention become such an impossible request? And now it's happening more and more. I'm not calling anyone out or being a hypocrite because I do it too, and I hate that I do. I'm trying to cut down on texting while I'm with others because I think it's rude. It's like saying that the person you're texting is more important than the one sitting before you.

I don't think that I'm going to change anything by bringing people's attention to these issues, but maybe people will begin to realize. Which would you rather receive? A text that says 'I love you' or the person standing before you declaring their love? Finding out a friend lied to you through a huge public forum or never knowing at all? Facebook and texting are just two huge excuses from talking to someone in person. And at the end of the day, we are all people who love to be acknowledged, more by the voice of a friend than by the buzzing of a text message.

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