WE live in 2019. In two months, this decade will be over and we will jump to 2020.

It seems impossible to do anything without using technology now. You can talk to people who are miles away, you can pay bills and manage bank accounts and whatnot.

But is the use of technology decreasing person to person interaction? I recently read an article where the author claimed that the people who live in the 21st century are alone. “We have so many new ways of communicating, yet we are so alone,” it read.

Instead of meeting someone in person or spending time with friends and family, people prefer to text or WhatsApp. I think it is true: technology has made us feel alone. We depend on our phones and laptops more than people.

This leads to a terrible destructive cycle. When we spend so much time on our phones and social media accounts, we can’t help but compare ourselves to others.

People who share photos of a holiday or new clothes…it leads to more resentment. We need to remember we live in the real world, not online.

Technology is affecting our society in a negative way, but that doesn’t mean that we are going to stop using technology; it has come to stay.

But it is up to us to decide how much we let technology dominate our lives. At the end it is always our decision: do we want to see the world through a screen or through our own eyes.

Sikandar Sajjad

Islamabad

Published in Dawn, October 21st, 2019