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Eagle Media

Put down your phone, and focus

Today’s day and age is embodied by the hopeless devotion to trends and technology, promoting a brilliantly self-indulged society that, consequently, focuses on the wrong issues the world faces.
When the iPhone 7 was released on Sept. 7, lines and crowds sprouted up across the country.
Some consumers allegedly spent up to seven hours waiting for a new phone.
Teenagers across the globe strive to replicate the trending fashions of the season, desiring nothing more than to get their hands on the latest clothing styles and shoes.
Every day, there seems to be a commercial for a new car that is somehow better than its predecessors and its competition.
And once everyone gets their hands on the latest trend, they are now “in” with society and, within minutes, there are selfies on Snapchat and posts on Twitter.
The issues that society is fixated on today – keeping up with trends and having the next best thing – are superficial and materialistic.
Mark Zuckerberg introduced Facebook’s plan to provide “access to basic internet services available to every person in the world” in Aug. 2013.
The plan includes a solar-powered aircraft, Aquila, that can theoretically fly for 90 consecutive days. Aquila will send out lasers to other planes, which will transmit data back, allowing Aquila to beam a connection down to the ground, which is caught by dishes and towers and transmitted into usable Wi-Fi.
The end result will be that the entire world will have connection to parts of the Internet, including Wikipedia, Google and Facebook, in an app called Internet.org.
The app is free, but like all good things, this one comes with a catch: In order to get the free app, one must first have a phone that is capable of using data.
Sounds easy enough, right? Well, it is easy for the people living in more developed countries. For those who are living in underdeveloped countries, obtaining and paying for an expensive, data-capable phone may not be the most important priority to them.
Granted, the app does have its perks. By allowing people the opportunity to connect to the internet for the first time, advancements in education can be made and more jobs can be found for those in developing countries.
These pros, however, don’t mask the fact that there are bigger issues in the world to be fighting than how many people are going online or fighting to get the latest technology.
There may be 4.3 million people around the world who are offline, but about 795 million people in the world don’t have enough food to survive, around 100 million people are homeless worldwide.
According to the last survey done by the United Nations, 1.1 billion don’t have access to safe drinking water and 10 million children die from lack of health care around the world while more than 200 million children don’t even have access to basic health care.
The truth is right here in scary-high numbers, but all society seems to care about is spreading trends and making sure everyone is caught up in the technological aspect.
People are pressured into buying luxuries that they don’t need, and it’s all to keep up with society’s standards of what is “cool” and “necessary” to survive in today’s world.

If we keep focusing on these covetous issues and giving them the devout attention that they have gotten so far, then at least it is safe to say that everyone will be stylish and up to date with the latest technology, movies, songs and jargon.
And for the people that really can’t afford such luxuries but are being pressured and conned into obtaining them anyway, at least they are now able to freely post on Facebook about how they’re starving, don’t have enough safe drinking water and are homeless.
But, hey, they can now use Google to search for images of mouthwatering food and blog about their misfortunes.

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