AP English Language & Composition
Mrs. Brumbach
18 Feburary2014
Is Technology Slowly Killing Romance? In “Rule of Thumbs: Love in the Age of Texting” Natalie Y. Moore said that “technology is slowly killing romance. Technology is killing romance, when you think of how the current generation communicates with each other compared to a 16 year old just 15 years ago. It’s pretty outrageous. When technology is involved in any kind of relationship there’s always that “What if?” question I your head. What if he/she is texting someone else, what if he/she wanted to talk later because they want to talk to someone else, what if he/she turned off their phone so they can hang out with someone else in peace. Technology forces romance to fail.
Romance (which is one of the most beautiful feelings in the world) is becoming a lost utopia in today’s generation. Instead of going out to a wonderful restaurant to eat dinner, or a cute date to the movies or staying in a cuddling up or playing video games all day with your significant other, people are receiving flirty text messages, comments on Instagram photos, mentions on Twitter, and so on. What has the world come to? Whatever happened to love at first sight? Love like in Titanic or The Notebook? Whatever happened to talking to someone you really like in, dare I say it, person?
Something is seriously wrong with this generation. I can name so many things, but my main focus is on romance because romance leads us human being to reproduce for the good. Social behavior is a number one for me. Call me old fashioned, but liking all my pictures on Instagram and receiving a text message is just not enough. You have to talk to a person face-to-face. As often as this happens when I’m walking to a class, I will see people I’ve chatted on Facebook, people I’ve texted, and have hung-out with a few times, and the person will look down at their phone just to avoid eye contact and a simple conversation. Are people these days really that awkward? No, due to social networks people think its okay to virtually talk to someone instead of talking to them in real life.
On top of that, conversations on Twitter, Facebook , or via text is like proof. With all this technology there are special ways to capture these dirty, horrible, happy conversations. One word, two syllables: Screenshot. Almost every smart phone has this ability, meaning you can capture a photo of anything! Texts messages, comments on Instagram, and so on. And this is where the he said, she said, cheating and lying starts to ruin things. Why? Because when you have technology it’s like having a magical wand. You can do ANYTHING with it. Hide things, be all sneaky. Everyone is so hooked on technology and social networks that they are blind to see what is in front of them. When an important conversation is being held is class, the listener is too concerned with their phone vibrating in their jean pocket to respond to the teacher. It’s crazy.
Technology can be helpful but I also think it makes things REALLY impersonal and also wastes so much of my time as well as yours. It makes relationships much too artificial and it's almost too easy to talk to people. You don't really get to know them. Why is it so hard to just sit down with someone and talk to them face-to-face? It really doesn’t make any sense to me. People are just so ignorant to the world today.
Moore’s article appealed to pathos in so many ways. The story is about how her boyfriend always wanted to text, never wanted to talk. She referred him has “Mr. Text-o-Rama.” Don’t get me wrong, I smile and get all cheesy when I get a message from someone I like, but if they have enough confidence to send me that message via text, they can most definitely have that same confidence and come up to me and hold a conversation.
So basically, I think the whole flirty text message, commenting on each other’s pictures on Instagram is overrated. And I think romance would be more effective and exciting if people would just let technology go for a bit. I understand that we all need phone to communicate with family and friends who live far away, or for emergencies. But when it comes down to romance? Just do things that old-fashioned way.
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