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Reset Time

Meeting A on my trip to India was a return to childhood in many ways. We go back to the end of high school which feels like an infinitely long time ago. It is great to be able to reset to a very uncomplicated time of our lives whenever we meet. It is almost impossible to stay in the here and now for too long - we have our happy place that is too easy to return to and we do that reflexively. 

Yes, there were conversations about her ailing parents, the need for nursing care and what their long term care means for her own life since she is single and has no plans of changing that. While those are real problems she is dealing with everyday, having an escape even for a few days gave her much needed reset. It is sad to read that the young people of today may not have such a luxury when they are our age. 

The internet is the “main contender” for blame, Blanchflower told Al Jazeera. “Nothing else fits the facts.”

In 2024, a Pew Research Survey found that three in four American teenagers felt happy or peaceful when they were without their smartphones. Researchers behind a 2024 study showing that British teenagers and preteens were the least happy in Europe also concluded that social media was a key reason.

Blanchflower’s assertion appears to be backed up by research in other nations worldwide, including the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, where more and more youths are gaining access to smartphones.

A and I wrote letters to each other after college for several years. I might still have some of them in the attic. She had a job that required travel to remote locations around India with no access to internet and international phone calls were expensive as well as unreliable. It slowed our communication and made things count. We'd write a letter over a period of time as things happened in our lives, ideas came to mind and so on. By the time we mailed it, there was a ton of ground covered. 

We both use WhatsApp now and every once in a while the conversations have the same level of richness and depth as those letters did. We'd likely never have the quality of friendship we do if we had internet and smartphones when we first met at an age when so much growing up is left to do.

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