Are We Present?-Maria Blanc Zoco

After reading stories in the supermarket aisle, I questioned the power of attention in our society. While reading the short story all I kept thinking was about times where I have been in the supermarket and seen people interact. Nowadays, unless a person has a specific question to ask, conversations between customers are practically inexistent. You might think, “well I talked to this one person in the line” But did he or she actually tell you a full story about their past or their culture? Probably not, because it was most likely an awkward conversation where you tried to reached to your pocket for your phone but at that moment you didn’t know where it was. It happens to me all the time. So I decided to look why our lack of stories in the supermarket is connected to our phone use.

 Victoria Woollaston from the Daily Mail states that the “average number of times a user checks their phone is nine times an hour”.  When I do groceries I am either looking at my phone or sprinting through the aisles trying to get the five items on my grocery list. I have never stopped in an aisle more than 10 minutes to find something; if I can’t find it then I probably won’t buy it.  I never go grocery shopping and take my time looking at products because I find that a waste of time.  However, I do think that my lack of “care” is linked to my urge to be on my phone.  How many notifications I have? How many likes? Why haven’t they answered me yet?

It is interesting how much face-to-face conversation has dropped since the device that is on our hands has taken that power to replace “the other person”.  Nowadays, we use our phones more than we talk to another person. In other words, we have master the task of multitasking to the point where we can be in two places at once.  Sherry Turkle from The New York Times reiterates the idea of our generations phone usage to explain that we use it as a scapegoat. “ Now they use it when they want to be both with their friends and, as some put it, “elsewhere”.  We are trying to live life through media at the same time as we try to “care” about what our friend story is about.

This is amusing because we use social media to tell the stories that we could be telling at the grocery store. However, we feel less judged when they are 140 characters and you have people liking them or retweeting them.

Our society is clearly raised by the power of technology and social media, however we shouldn’t allow that consumed our quality time with strangers or friends.  I believe that we still have to find a balance between face-to-face conversations and the time we spend in social media.  Many stories aren’t being heard and that is because we prefer to stroll down Instagram than to listen to someone explain why they prefer kale to romaine.

Works Cited

Turkle, Sherry. "Stop Googling. Let’s Talk." The New York Times. The New York Times, 26 Sept. 2015. Web. 20 Feb. 2016.

Woollaston, Victoria. "How Often Do You Check Your Phone? The Average Person Does It 110 times a DAY (and up to Every 6 Seconds in the Evening)." Mail Online. Associated Newspapers, 08 Oct. 2013. Web. 20 Feb. 2016.