For those of you who may not know George Watsky, let me introduce you to him. Watsky is a 29-year-old rapper, writer, performer and lyricist from San Francisco, Calif. He started his performing career as a spoken word poet and was named the Youth Speaks Grand Slam Poetry Champion and the Brave New Voices International Poetry Slam Champion in 2006. Soon after rising to the top of slam poetry, Watsky began making and producing music. He has released four studio albums, four singles and two live albums. His music ranges from deeply meaningful and heartfelt to outrageously silly and provocative. Two of his best songs are easily “Tiny Glowing Screens Part 1” and “Tiny Glowing Screens Part 2.” Both of these have a very relevant message in the world dominated by smartphones in which we live in. Although our smartphones are incredibly useful pieces of technology, we must not let them consume our livelihoods. Using a selection of Watsky’s lyrics, I want to highlight some of the issues with our phones.
In “Tiny Glowing Screens” the refrain has a line that goes: “When the sun burns out we’ll light the world with tiny glowing screens.” The song continues into the first verse where Watsky explains how “it really tastes like chicken when I bite the hand that feeds me.” Here he acknowledges the fact that the internet, and consequently the use of smartphones, has been a big reason for his success. Watsky spends the entire song elaborating on how attached we are to smartphones, but is able to acknowledge that even he depends on them for his success. This is a great illustration as to just how attached we are to our phones because even someone like Watsky who can see a lot of the bad effects of phones still requires them.
“I can feel the slow rot,” is another of Watsky’s great lines. Here he demonstrates the loss of brain cells we are enduring from constantly reading from our phones rather than from books or other meaningful material. The problem isn’t only smart phones, it’s tablets and computers as well. More and more people are putting down books and picking up their screens to watch YouTube, read Reddit, play video games or binge on Netflix. Near the very end of the song Watsky asks: “Are we useless?” With the tremendous reliance on our phones, instead of asking what can we do with our phones, the question is what can we do without them. The answer is that it seems to be less and less.
In “Tiny Glowing Screens Part 2” Watsky opens the song with: “There’s 7 billion 46 million people on the planet and most of us have the audacity to think we matter.” He explains how the number of people on the planet is so large, but most of us are very self-centered and see ourselves as being more important than we actually are. He continues by saying, “If we could see the context of the universe in which we exist, and we could see how small each one of us is … is that a world we want to text in?” In this line he puts our smartphone usage into context by presenting the size and scale of the universe as so unimaginably massive and people as so incredibly small in comparison. He explains how if we were better able to realize the vast complexity of where we live, then we wouldn’t be so inclined to waste time on our smartphones.
Whenever I walk outside, for any amount of time, in any location, I have a hard time not finding at least one person who is staring at their tiny glowing screen. In today’s world the majority of our country’s population has a smartphone. Even the most technologically challenged people seem to have one. They are extremely useful pieces of technology that make our lives easier and help us stay better informed, but they are also a physical barrier between people. It is hard to have a meaningful conversation or make a connection with someone when they are absorbed in technology at the same time.
As a society, we are ridiculously attached to our smartphones to the point that people seem to rather look at pictures of beautiful places on their phones than to actually go to these beautiful places. Even when people go to wonderful places or do fun things, there is a tendency to stay constantly connected to a tiny glowing screen. Our smartphones do amazing things, but they are no substitute for real experiences or forming real connections. Although our phones are smart in the sense that they can do an extensive number of things, is it really that smart of us to be constantly using them?
Do you think that Watsky is making legitimate points in “Tiny Glowing Screens” Parts 1 and 2? Does 21st century society need to begin to unplug from our electronics? Please send all comments and concerns to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
