Old People, Pt. 2

When I get really bored my mind tends to wander to topics that other people might not normally delve into. I was walking around my house today trying to find a reason not to start on my homework, and I started thinking about text messaging. Not really text messaging alone, but the whole phenomenon of twenty-four hour communication. Every day I can keep in touch with many of my friends who are thousands and thousands of miles away. I can have a casual conversation with someone I never met who lives in Myanmar. Not only is the communication boundless, but its free. Ever since I downloaded AIM at the end of middle school I have become accustomed to having long, pointless chats with people I see every single day. The art of creating a fine away message is a coveted skill. Anyway, I got thinking about how much I use text messaging and email right now, while I'm young, and the more I thought about it the more I realized that just because I got older doesn't mean I would suddenly stop using this stuff. I envisioned myself 60 years from now sitting with a laptop in a recliner and chatting with a friend down the street who is doing the exact same thing. Maybe I'll even type messages to my wife in the next room because talking is a little too taxing for my old body. Loneliness is only a problem when you're old if you don't have an AIM screenname, if you don't subscribe to an email mailing list, or you aren't a member of an online chat forum. When my generation gets to be elderly, we'll still be zipping around the information superhighway like we are 20 years old. We'll be ordering our groceries and keeping up with old friends, all while staring at a computer screen with our failing eyes and pecking away at a keyboard with gnarled fingers. People will be found dead in front of computer screens, and it won't be that surprising. The downside of being able to access everything in the world from the click of a button means you don't have to go anywhere, do anything, or talk to real, live people. It's okay now while we're young, because the draws of life outside of the internet are still lucrative enough that game of frisbee still sounds more fun than a Teen Talk chat room. Problem is, when we get old and the active stuff gets harder and harder to do, what's going to stop some people from never leaving their keyboards?