Festival brings lots of expectation, excitement and joy with the constant reminder from my mother to do cleaning of the house before the festival season begins. It usually starts with me, my sister and my mother searching dust in every corner of the house. As scope of the search expands, the untouched corners, cupboards and cabinets get explored and cleaned. Last year when we were doing the same thing, I saw my mother collecting postcards and letters in a separate box. When I inquired about this, she told me that these postcards and letters were sent by her friends and family members. She showed me the first letters sent by her parents when she moved away after marriage. As she reminisced while holding onto one such letter, feeling its creases between her fingers, she told me that perhaps that is the feeling my kids would be deprived of.

I feel she was correct as we live in a world where instant communication is at our fingertips. The growth of emerging technologies providing many social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp etc. People use these platforms as a medium for global interaction. The dependency on technology is growing on a daily basis. As youngsters we are often expected by our friends and family members to express love, affection and care through social media. Social occasions like marriage ceremonies have turned into the selfie taking events and people constantly busy on their phones uploading the pictures to social media.

In the classrooms, teachers are putting extra effort to capture the attention of the student as the digital technology has created an easily distracted generation with short attention spans. Student spend more time on social media as compare to the hour spend on studies which is creating problem for parents and teachers. It hinders the ability of critical thinking as well as the ability to write. Being engaged in discussions with friends through those ubiquitous WhatsApp groups is preferred over catching up in person. Recently the survey done by Pew center, a technology related research organisation, and an NGO called Common Sense Media, highlights that most affected groups are under the age of 20.

The extensive use of apps for creating and sharing short videos is violating the norms of privacy. Many videos on such apps feature just one person and are evidently shot in the user's home often in the bedroom. The teen dominated user base either does not understand privacy or does not care for it.

Use of extensive vocabulary among our generation is fading away due to the fact that traditional words have been replaced by texting abbreviations and internal acronyms and we find excuses to run away from writing down the notes.

The irony is that even I am facing the same problem of shortage of words to express myself often. I have started using abbreviations while texting to my friends. I prefer to take pictures of notes posted by my friends instead of writing down the notes. I think we must not forget what Herbert Simon said about the technology. He said “There are no morals about technology at all. Technology expands our ways of thinking about things, if we are bad people we use technology for bad purposes and we are good people we use for good purposes.”