Viewpoint: Put the BlackBerry away

Nine of those e-mails were about career or summer internship opportunities, three were about an upcoming meeting, one reminded me that I had a book due at the library, one was announcing a deal from Amazon, and the others were miscellaneous reminders and items that I should have paid more attention to.

Each time that I stepped out of class that day, I would feel a compelling urge to check my text messages and e-mails, not because I was expecting anything to happen, but because I worried that something urgent would happen and I would be the last to know.

Anyone who compulsively checks their e-mail, or frequently feels “ghost” vibrations on their cell phone, surely understands this anxiety about feeling constantly connected with everyone around us.

While the phenomenon of living in a world where we are overwhelmed with information is universal, it offers a distinct challenge for college students trying to figure out what they love.

In a world that is constantly producing more and more information, it is becoming more and more difficult to distill what is meaningful from what is meaningless.

I don’t discover anything new about myself each time that I check my e-mail or scroll through photo albums on Facebook, yet it’s what I spend a significant amount of time each day doing.

The reason that spending so much time in a cloud of information is so addicting is because there’s no risk involved. Instead, it’s a chance for me to interact with people and the world around me with the impenetrable protection of a screen.

Talking to people in person, or even on the phone, is difficult because we’re not entirely in control of how we’re being perceived. Someone might notice that my fly is open, or pick up on how closely I’m paying attention to them, or might decide on a number of other reasons that I’m a repulsive person who they never want to talk to again.

Such a possibility, especially for a college student trying to figure out their place in the world, is incredibly scary.

What I am slowly realizing, however, is that making myself vulnerable to a world beyond my computer screen and cell phone is the only way that I can grow and find meaning in college.

This means embracing the possibility that we may hurt other people and that other people might hurt us. But at the same time, realizing the possibility that we can develop a meaningful understanding of ourselves outside of the buzzing of our BlackBerries and iPhones.

Samuel Levine is a Fall 2011 Paste BN Collegiate Correspondent. You can learn more about him here.

This story originally appeared on the Paste BN College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists. The blog closed in September of 2017.