Our Materialistic Must Haves

Image: BestStuff.com

I recently made the typical student blunder of losing my phone in a dingy night club in Bristol. Luckily I had a programme turned on that allowed my computer to find my phone and then make it make a very loud and annoying sound, much to the hungover Reps displeasure the following morning. Although I was only phoneless for less than a day, I genuinely struggled with being out of touch with the world around me, despite the fact that the world survived perfectly happily without my communicating with it. So here are a few of the things that we have become increasingly addicted to that don’t necessarily improve our lives as much as we might think…

All things phones. From checking a quick fact online to forgetting someone’s name and then checking it on Facebook, we can’t get enough of our on-the-go info. Constantly argued by the less technological generation is whether or not this is going to have a profound effect on our memories. Coming from someone with terrible information-retaining skills, it is certainly not helping.

Online TV. One of my friends came up with a very inventive necessity to give up for lent last year: iPlayer. Although we don’t spend every 5 minutes on iPlayer/4oD/SideReel- we do spend a disproportionate amount compared to our parents. The act of lying in bed watching a movie or American sitcom before nodding off is hugely recognisable to our generation. Whereas our parents would spend the hour before blissful sleep reading a mind-enhancing novel, we seem to spend it catching up on Take Me Out or learning the new vocabulary of TOWIE. 

Computers. It would be impossible for a student to do all the studenty things they need to do without some sort of computational device. Essays are ‘handed in’ online, events are organised on Facebook and timetables are only issued electronically. The question therefore has to be put forward as to whether we are being forced to become addicted to our devices, even if we didn’t have a tendency to do so before. Either way, we spend most of our day attached to these things, but I suppose I don’t mind too much considering you’re currently using yours to read my blog.