Those Were the Days

I saw this picture on 9Gag.com this morning and I can't help but to miss my childhood and feel lonely about those days. Those were really the days. Even if I did not have a generally good childhood, I enjoyed the times I go out of my house and see my friends. When we go out, we just sit and hang out under a tree near my house even at night and we just talk, make jokes, and laugh about them and we even go home at around midnight because of hanging out. Now, nothing's really funny when my friends make jokes online and through text messages. 

I know that mobile phones and social networking sites are created and developed to maintain the connection between us and our friends. I know the developers are aiming for that but unfortunately, the mass took it to a different direction. Most of us, myself included, got addicted with these innovations and relied too much from them to maintain the connection and communication. Yeah, my friends don't really have the time and all and these things help us connect to each other but we took these to a different level, a different degree of usage. We went a bit overboard because now, when I go out of my house and into the streets, I only see few kids and I can't hear any laughter or footsteps from kids chasing each other around. I bet most of them got hooked with the social networking sites and mobile phones. 

I'm not really blaming the developers for the effects because they created these innovations to help us. Mankind just got addicted to them and they are having a hard time to let go. It seems that because of the easy access to our friends to chatting and text messaging, we rely so hard on them. We have forgotten the essence of going outside and hanging out with them and just talk. We forgot about the meaning of our friends' actual presence and the true feeling of companionship and maybe what it's like to laugh out loud with all our friends' jokes and remembering all the funny and embarrassing memories. 

It looks like most kids of today will never know and enjoy the meaning and feeling of going outside and enjoy the childhood games because they will be imprisoned in their own rooms or in their houses looking at their mobile phones and computers or laptops and just sit there to waste their childhood. If I'm a parent, I would be sad for my kids if they turned into this.