Admittedly, life is much easier than it was a decade ago, all thanks to technology. The ever-evolving tech innovations and advancements have made life bearable, even enjoyable. They have made the youth to innovate, create and thrive in their spaces. Access to information specifically on reproductive health and linkages to services have also improved over the years.

Key services have been brought right onto our phone screens and we no longer have to make endless trips to offices or facilities with mean-looking officials. For instance, mobile banking has saved us the agony of queueing in banking halls with no washrooms for hours on end; buying and selling of items has been made easier and we can order exactly what we want, when we want it and it gets promptly delivered right at our doorsteps, even food. Yes, already cooked food! The medical world has also benefited from such technological advancements whereby people can order for medicines and have them delivered to their door steps.

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However, the more everything around us is made to be easy and instantly achievable, the more we get programmed to expect instant results. While it was bearable to patiently queue in a banking hall for several hours just a year or so ago, the same cannot be said for today, and especially for the youth. We hold nostalgic memories of our parents and grandparents boiling our favourite meals in earthen pots for hours but we can’t bring ourselves to it – the wait is unbearable and we quickly choose the quick deliveries that instantly satisfy the immediate need.

While instant gratification is everyone’s ideal fantasy – to get everything they need, when they need it and how they need it – the world isn’t perfect enough to grant everyone what they want and when they want it, and for that the virtue of patience and the acceptance of compromises helps to maintain order, respect and harmony.

How is it that the world’s population keeps growing and yet people get lonelier, even with technology in their hands? Technology should only just compliment the quality of our lives but we should not be dependent on it.

The technological advancements and their promise of instant gratification have instilled in everyone the feeling of self-sufficiency; that as long as one has money and a mobile device connected to the internet, then they do not have the need of others people, and so more and more people withdraw from social places and become prisoners of their own making. Blame technology!

If we woke up tomorrow to find the internet gone and all these utility mobile applications not working, forcing of us to get out and queue in government offices, banking halls and shopping malls, we would have a chaotic world of impatient people screaming and pulling at each other, each fighting to be the first to get served so that they rush back to their houses to ‘rest’.

Watch out youths, use technology to innovate and thrive but don’t be lost it!