Existential Crisis In Nathan Jurgenson's The IRL Fetish

In Nathan Jurgenson’s The IRL Fetish, he makes it plainly obvious that the modern-day human is suffering from living online instead of being present in the moment. Every person, young or old, is constantly on an electronic device throughout the day. We try to distance ourselves from the internet, but we cannot help but think about taking photos for social media or the countless notifications they will have once they return to their device. The world is passing by us and we are no longer taking in its beauty. After discussing the facts about how the internet is a part of us, Jurgenson concluded that “we may never fully log off, but this in no way implies the loss of the…appreciation of life sans screen.” The internet has become a constant part
As Jurgenson puts it, “[f]orgetting one’s phone causes a sort of existential crisis.” One summer, as I boarded a plane to I travel to Los Angeles, California, I accidently left my phone in Seattle, Washington. At first, I was scared that I wasn’t going to be able to survive my trip even though I had a chaperone. At that point, I boiled down the possibilities of why I was so frightened that I did not have my phone. Out of everything that my phone could supply, I missed it because I wasn’t going to be able to call my family and friends, look up scrumptious restaurants, and be able to take photographs. I had my chaperone’s phone to call my family, we already had our restaurants scoped out, and if I was that desperate to take pictures, I could buy a disposable one. People did survive on vacations before cell phones and I was determined to have an electronic free vacation. I ended up having an amazing time in Disneyland, Universal Studios, and Huntington Beach with minimal problems. It is satisfactory to separate yourself from your phone because you can survive. People did it all the time before and we truly do not need a second brain to carry with us all the