Karen MacDowall Haggerty

And when I say “internet,” I’m talking about all modes of getting there, from the desktop to the smartphone. My husband and I were out running errands today, and an employee of a certain store was so hypnotized by her phone that she couldn’t even look up from it while we were checking out. I can see now why many stores suffer from so much theft. Employees aren’t paying attention! Even when we were leaving, I said, “Have a good afternoon,” as I passed her, she never looked up from her phone, and only grunted some semblance of a response, “Uh-huh.”

Customer Service matters. I doubt there’s a person in that store that I’d hire in my own business (if I had one anymore). Rich has told me time and again (as I have griped about this subject time and again), that I’d have to close shop because there would be no one to hire, that this is just how people are now. And I keep having to ask, “WHY?”

The internet has become ingrained in our culture. When it first became available on desktop, I trembled as I set up my first account. It was dial-up, of course, and I had to buy a new computer that had a modem, but I was excited! When the first page opened much, much later (and you who remember dial-up will know what I mean), I was astounded by what I could pull up on the screen. Just to test the waters, I looked up Mozart. It not only came up with script, but with color photos of paintings of him as well. It was a great tool. If I had to look something up for research I was doing, I could do that in the middle of the night! I didn’t have to wait on the next day for the library to open. Outstanding! And as much of a pain as insomnia is, I have to say I’m my most creative when I’m in the throes of it. The brain doesn’t shut off, so I take advantage of the quiet house.

But as time went on, what I thought was a blessing was showing signs of a dark side, a dank, sleezy place where decent people don’t go, but could certainly end up there by mistake. My late sister told a hilarious story about getting the internet at her jobsite, and one day while looking up information about a medical condition, her screen became alive with things that should never be seen in public. Telling about her panic in trying to get it shut off was hysterical, but she knew that it could have cost her her job. She said, “You gotta watch every little letter!”

In the last decade of the smartphone, we can access the internet wherever we are, right from our pocket. On the bus, train, at school, home, work, out at the ballpark. This is where the internet is not only a curse because it’s distracting people from what they’re doing, but there is a plethora of evil and filth that even a child can get online to see. It has truly been the pedophile’s dream. There is no end of stories of children who go missing, and the last person they communicated with was “a boy I met online” that wanted to meet up for ice-skating or bowling.

When I see small children whose faces are glued to the screen of a smart phone, I just want to jerk the parents up and scream, “What is wrong with you? Do you realize that phone is not a babysitter?” I’m talking two-year-olds who have a phone to constantly watch movies! What has happened to our families? I’ll tell you what we’ve come to: We’re people who share the same last name and happen to live in the same house. It’s pitiful. The family unit is, and in fact for some time has been, in a horrible state of decay.

And look out–here comes AI. God only knows what hell that little smidge of technology will unleash. Fasten your seatbelts; it’s going to be a bumpy life.