To the Editor,
What exactly do we know and where are we actually going? Our world is extreme of the haves and the have-nots.
We don’t know the extent of damage cell phones and social media have caused to our young people, we don’t know what the future holds for them. It reminds me of an old song, “He’s got the whole world in his hands”. If the child is eight or 10 years old and does have the whole world in their hand, it’s too much to handle, over-stimulated, overwhelmed, and over cooked electrically. Why? Because we overestimated the long-term effects of exposure to social media and cellphones. Have we learned anything from that knowledge? No. We’re making the same mistakes with AI treating it like a toy, a tool to be used to destroy some people’s lives, but its existence marries perfectly with the cellphones and computers and a world filled with humans from eight to 80 who prefer a virtual world to the real world. It’s all about escapism and yes, it’s addictive. Kind of like online sports betting, alcoholism and drug addiction, a by-product of our brave new world.
Recently on the news they did a survey of what people were worried about; jobs and economy, Trump/U.S. relations, inflation, health care, and immigration.
Not even a whisper about the planet, the land, the water, the loss of wildlife habitat, climate change and the very health and wellness of the land we stand on. Everyone and everything have an expiry date and if we don’t take better care of what we have, it will all be gone.
Andy Perreault
