I come from a household where “playing” meant going outside and turning on the hose if you got too hot.  My friends in middle school only expressed our feelings on AIM and MySpace. I come from a generation that surely knows its way around technology, and only at times, depended on it for the base of communication and entertainment. As a student in 2014, we are constantly being told that our generation is a bunch of zombies that are magnetically attracted to our phones. That always makes me mad even though sometimes I am guilty of it. Lately, I have been taking notice of my peers and our public actions with our cell phones.  
   I took some time out of lunch last Thursday to do a little on-site research.  I sat on the second balcony of the Colvard Student Union and made a few notes on the people passing by.  I counted 250 students walking in the area and came up with the following numbers:
Sixteen pairs of people conversing…
Seventeen people looking up and casually walking…
Nine people running to classes I assume they were late for…
Forty-Six students talking on their phone…
Two couples practicing their right to publicly display their affection…
And 142 people looking at their phones (texting, tweeting, etc.)
    First off, I sincerely hope you do not find your Student Association president to be too creepy during my lunch hour, but I sincerely was curious. Secondly, I must admit that I was not surprised to find these numbers, but I surely was not excited about the results.
   I challenge you to take a look around next time you are on campus during lunch hour.  It is a little scary how many of us are glued to our phones instead of focused on where we are going.  I cannot lie and say I do not attempt to efficiently get things done between classes. I am as guilty as any of those 142 people.
   With it being a new year, I love all of the new opportunities we have to improve upon ourselves.  This is truly a new slate set out in front of us, and we now have the opportunity to start building upon it. I have a few new years resolutions that I look forward to personally working on. 
   Over the past 3.5 years, I have spent more time in the Chick-Fil-A line than the library.  I have enjoyed sitting in the Cotton District over running in the Sanderson.  I have liked taking naps over returning emails.  I have enjoyed having more time for myself than attempting to make new friends outside my comfort zone.  
  My issues that I plan to resolve may be mainstream and typical of a man my age (lose weight, be more active, etc.), but I sincerely want us to resolve something more for our generation as a whole.  
   I hope to increase the longing for personal connections with one another. We need more knowledge of the person sitting next to us rather than the obsession with the celebrity who will be gone tomorrow.  I hope that an encounter with a loved one is more reassuring than a “like” on our Facebook status. I hope that the words we use to encourage one another are more impactful than receiving coveted retweets.  I hope that a hug from a friend is embraced more than a double tap on Instagram from a complete stranger.  I hope that a six-second video on Vine is always overshadowed by an hour-long lunch spent catching up with a friend.  
  Einstein once said, “I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction.”  I may not always understand his formulas and lessons on subjects I made sure to avoid in college, but I confidently agree with him on that statement.  Our generation is falling into a state of apathy amongst one another. I hope with this new year just starting, we can all become a little less involved with our phones and more interested with our futures, our friends and our campus.  Let’s make 2014 a year that we get involved, give back and are more intentional with our time and effort. 
  Whether positive or not, social media is now engraved into our culture and seems to be here to stay.  Our youth and time as MSU students is not so permanent.  Enjoy 2014 for all that it is worth —  it seems like it will be the perfect year to be a Bulldog.  
In Maroon and White,
Michael Hogan