Samsung Electronics employees display the new Galaxy S4 smartphones
during an event at their head office in Seoul on April 25, 2013.
Smartphones have limited the mentality of the youth within the scope of
what their applications can do. PHOTO | FILE |
The digital world is good for Kenya.
However, it has exposed our youth to foreign practices that have changed how they view themselves and the world around them.
If
you think this is far-fetched then you have not watched the Sakata
Mashariki show on Citizen TV, where judges and audiences identify more
with poorly choreographed foreign acts than excellently done African
ones.
Where did we go wrong? Owning a smartphone today
is not only a symbol of affluence, it is a sign of fashion,
advancement, power, and the digital hype synonymous with the youth, who
have become obsessive slaves of technology.
Smartphones have limited the mentality of the youth within the scope of what their applications can do.
THOUGHT PROCESS CONDENSED
They
cannot rationalise and think beyond the technological specifications of
those applications and outside the scope of what their inventors
intended them to achieve.
Smartphones have distorted
the traditional world where people think naturally and sometimes take
breaks from pressure, replacing it with false consciousness where one’s
brain must be continuously engaged to make full use of the gadget.
Cellphones,
invented to facilitate communication, are increasingly becoming the
enemies of communication by hiding important gestures, complicating
relationships, and invading private lives as more and more applications
are invented to obscure the value of human communication.
The
more people become attached to their smartphones the more they
prescribe to a reality that cannot be accessed beyond the gadget as they
expose themselves to its materiality.
FORGING AN IDENTITY
This has complicated the lifestyle of Kenyan youths as they struggle to identify with trending issues and hash tags.
However,
the good news is that this is not a uniquely Kenyan problem. Here in
the United States, the situation is more worrying because children are
exposed to smartphones at a much younger age.
It is easier for them to forget social and life skills as they get swallowed up into the virtual world of false consciousness.
Smartphone
obsession is a problem for a Kenyan youth striving to forge an identity
since it limits the opportunity to think, rethink, and be creative.
This
is why our youth are easily influenced by Nigerian Igbo movies and
contemporary music. Is it not time to consider Prof Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s
advice on language?
Should county assemblies be allowed to speak mother tongue? Is language the key to our long quest for identity?
CULTURE APPRECIATION
One interesting lesson youths in Kenya can learn from their counterparts in progressive African countries like South Africa and Nigeria and those in developed economies like the United States is that the young people in these countries are proudly local in their approach to reality.
One interesting lesson youths in Kenya can learn from their counterparts in progressive African countries like South Africa and Nigeria and those in developed economies like the United States is that the young people in these countries are proudly local in their approach to reality.
They value their own cultural convictions in science and technology, literature, sports, poetry, music, food, and fashion.
They
have modernised their locality, localised their modernity, and
jealously defended their patriotism as citizens of those nations.
The
youth in Kenya can avoid getting onto all sorts of cultural bandwagons
by ridding themselves of the copycat mentality that is enslaving their
identity.
Dr Ogenga is the head of the
Communication, Journalism and Media Studies Department at Rongo
University and a Visiting Research Fellow, African Studies Center,
Boston University USA
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