YOU’RE FREE By Rebbetzin Sara Gross

Iam steadily working on controlling and cutting my tech use, but sometimes I worry that I am inconveniencing other people because of it. At times, I feel like my choice to minimize my tech use causes trouble for my friends and acquaintances by making me less accessible, and I wonder how fair that is. Then something happened to give me clarity.

I was working on a project with someone who wanted to send me information via WhatsApp. I apologized that I no longer used WhatsApp and felt guilty to make thing more complex for him. After several attempts to send the information in different formats, I began to feel worse about his trouble. I meekly apologized for not having WhatsApp, and his response surprised me. He said without any frustration, “No need to apologize, you are free! Enjoy that freedom.”

The memories of being a slave to my chats flooded through my mind. No matter how hard I tried not to check my WhatsApp messages, I could never be free. I would just check quickly and then go check again a few minutes later. Though my choices may cause some inconvenience to others, I need to live for myself, not for others.

Did You Know

Did you know that technology use has strongly affected the patience levels of our generation. Forty years ago, it was normal to play chess by mail. The two players would play a game that would last months, by sending one move at a time to their opponent by mail. Today, if a purchase is not delivered by the next day at the latest, people feel impatient. If a text is not responded to within ten minutes, we find it extremely rude. Children of this generation have never experienced the norms of the past, waiting for the oven to cook the food, not a microwave. In fact, this generation is often referred to as “A Microwave Generation.” The effort that goes into doing a job properly or learning a new skill is difficult to cultivate with those of this generation. We need to be wary of this phenomenon and put effort into combatting the lack of patience so prevalent today.

To share a tech triumph or story of chizuk, please email Techtriumphs@ tagbaltimore.org.

This is a service of TAG Baltimore. TAG Baltimore is an organization that provides technology awareness, education, and support. They can be reached at 410-449-1824 or help@ tagbaltimore.org.