In third grade I was taught how to write cursive. By fifth grade they were teaching us to type instead. We boarded one of the last trains to leave the station of stationery, building speed as we headed towards a new kind of revolution; a communication era. Technology leaped forward and we raced after it with glee, each invention redefining our world. This was our Promethean moment, only this time we would collectively pay the price for enlightenment.
“Yeah it's tough, tried to quit twice now and I get pounding headaches from cravings. It isn't that hard to avoid getting caught though, at my school I just step outside and go in this little courtyard with trees in it, bada bing bada boom, outdoor juul room.”
This was written by a high school student about ‘juuling’, the use of a small nicotine vape-pen. It’s odorless, discrete, and just as addictive as good ole’ cigarettes. Kids smoking isn’t a new problem, but it’s been redefined by tangential advancements in compact batteries and atomizers. I heralded e-cigarettes as a fantastic device for smokers to ween themselves off more harmful tobacco products. After all, nicotine by itself is much less destructive than the additives that often accompany it. When you take the convenience of this tool and place it in the hands of children the context changes.
Now you have individuals who never were addicted to nicotine flooding their body with a mind-altering drug. As nicotine becomes the primary producer of beta-endorphin and dopamine the mind begins to stop doing so naturally. This addiction is amplified in kids as their minds are still developing, creating a stronger dependence.
When I first heard about vaping I didn’t think about any of that. It’s impossible to consider all the implications of new technology, and it’s a hell of a lot easier to focus on the exciting parts. We are eager to get our hands on the next best thing. Our demand for something better, faster, smaller and sleeker drives breakneck competition and development. There’s no time to stop and weigh the ethics when you’ll be left in the dust by those who don’t.
It took fifty years before cigarettes were widely recognized as carcinogenic. Those fifty years people freely enjoyed smoking unaware of any associated health risk. As we enter into the forty-fifth year since the invention of the personal computer, what symptoms will we see bubble up? As we freely enjoy the benefits technology brings to our lives, what consequences are we blind to?
This new era has redefined our society entirely, but it hasn’t, and can’t, change who we are at our cores. We are compassionate, caring, emotional creatures who need each-other to survive. We’ve been given a new set of tools to communicate but we haven’t lost the old ones. Reach out in real-life, meet your friend for coffee and ask them how they are. Not the bullshit platitude we always say, really ask them how they are. Talk about all the symptoms of life.
We put the most exciting parts of our lives on display and bury reality. Let’s do the hard thing and dig up the truth together.