To Go Offline

by John Louise R. Olmo

Administrative Aide VI - Bataan National High School

Date posted: Feb. 27, 2019 | 4:07 PM

Sharing and posting memorable moments in Facebook, giving updates, and discussing trends in Twitter, capturing and uploading precious photos in Instagram, playing and watching videos in YouTube, and sending messages or video call thru Messenger, these are some of the activities we routinely do nowadays in our social media accounts almost every day. Thus, I am wondering, can we still live without accessing those social networking sites maybe for at least 24hours?

As we entered the 21st century, Technology totally conquered the lives of us. In today’s digital era, we are so much hooked and habituated to the use of various gadgets with the technology of Internet. By using computers, laptops, cellphones, tablets and other handheld devices, we can easily connect to those social networking sites. Effortlessly, we can go online.

Free Internet and Wi-Fi Access are almost everywhere which served as an avenue for us to go online almost any time. During our free time, we enter the online world that provides satisfaction, relaxation, and happiness to us. It actually consumes most of our time. It is called as “me time” in which we pleasure ourselves.

Today, grade-schoolers and youth won’t last a day without being able to check and update their social media accounts. Certainly, they will feel lost in the circulation if they won’t log-in online and see the society’s new buzz. More so, the majority of them are excited to share what they feel inside for the day.

Strikingly, those young as one year old babies may also be exposed already with the radiance of technology. As an example, they already know how to appreciate musical videos from YouTube played by their parents in the iPad or tablet. Even those young at hearts are not left behind with the craze. They also enjoy the magic and attraction of social networking site like facebook.

But then with the invasion of technology, it looks like we cannot live without it anymore. It seems that it is our everyday meals, our breakfast, our lunch and dinner that we cannot skip to make us complete each day. So the question for them especially those already addicted with the usage of it, can we afford not to use the technology for a long time? Are we up for a challenge if we are task to go offline for at least straight 24 hours and maybe few more days with no hesitation?

As a Batang 90s like me, I just still remember the time that we truly enjoyed our childhood days without any gadget and internet connection. We were able to play street games like patintero, hide and seek, langit lupa, luksong tinik, luksong baka, tumbang preso and many others. In short, we enjoyed those times and we were able to collect plenty memories when we were young. Also, there is no distraction during our school days.