It was announced at the Mobile World Congress last week that a revamped version of the Nokia 3310 would be released. The phone that was originally released in 2000 has been given a slight makeover but will not have the ability to connect to Wi-Fi or GPS, which means no Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat.
When I first heard of the new release of the Nokia, I couldn’t help but wonder why anyone would want technology to travel backward. The Millennial generation thrives on new technology, and we have come to expect more and more features from the latest and greatest smartphones and handheld devices. That’s when I realized I had answered my own question.
People are becoming fully dependent on their cellphones for virtually everything from ordering their groceries to buying furniture. Most people feel the need to keep their cellphones with them at all times, often compulsively checking to see what messages, notifications and updates are available to them.
In fact, according to a poll by Gallup, about 81 percent of individuals keep their phones on them all the time during their waking hours. In another Gallup poll, more than half of participants between ages 18 and 29 said they couldn’t imagine their lives without their smartphone.
Both of these polls show that there is an overwhelming amount of dependency in our culture, especially among young adults, on smartphones. Individuals are increasingly forming unhealthy attachments to these devices.
Forbes Magazine even referred to the smartphone addiction as an epidemic, stating Americans collectively check their cellphones or mobile devices more than 9 billion times per day, which is a 13 percent increase since the poll was taken in 2015.
The release of the new Nokia phone could be an attempt to draw our society away from this dependency and take us back to a more simple time when we didn’t need our cellphones with us at all times.
Cellphones were not created to be idolized and obsessed over. They were created to make life a little easier by making phones portable. The Nokia hits all of the basic requirements and as an added bonus cleverly snuck in an updated version of the Snake game for its returning users.
While there are many benefits of society reverting back to a time when cellphones had physical buttons and a 30-day standby battery life, I am a realist. We are a constantly evolving society, and we will most likely always thrive on the new and improved. We will continue to want instant access to all of our favorite tech vices.
Even if the Nokia doesn’t change Millennials' minds about technology, it might at least serve as a reminder of what cellphones used to be and that they did the job just fine.
