Whenever me and my mom drive by Royal Palm Beach’s parks, I always think the same thought, every time: “Where is everybody?” Most of the time, you rarely see anybody, nowadays, taking a stroll through a park’s nice sidewalks or play in their nicely renovated playgrounds. I remember how back in the days, there were adults and kids my age swarming at Veterans Park, during the early 2000s. Today, people just go there to take prom photos or do wedding vows.
In my opinion, all this emptiness is caused by this main reason: the entertainment generation today. It all started with the invention of Facetime with the iPhone and the new chatting apps today. Take Snapchat, for example. Instead of people meeting their friends face-to-face, all they do is just text and send picture or videos to their friend and say that they’ve “spoken” to their friends. In reality, it’s making people, especially kids, lazy as a Bullmastiff.
Video games are also doing the same, if you ask me. Not long ago, me and my friends used to schedule movie days. Whenever we weren’t doing anything, we would pick a date and time to go see a movie that just came out at the theater. Now, whenever I call my friends to set up a movie day, they reply hazily, saying, “I can’t because I’m playing.” Trust me when I say that going to watch a movie at the theater by yourself is not as fun as it sounds.
But, like many other things, that’s just how life is. One minute you’re having the time of your life and the next you’re just hanging around alone in public, wondering what the heck happened. In that case, the best thing for people to do is to cherish those memories and to get out there and make new ones with new people that you meet. This should always be a lesson for the next future generation to come.
Topher Vargas, Royal Palm Beach
