15th Century Printing Press Invented by Gutenberg
In the 15th century, people feared the printing press. There was a genuine worry that the widespread availability of books would promote ignorance, dilute scholarship, and destroy traditional authority. Looking back, we see those fears as misconceptions that ignored the potential for books to educate and empower. I can’t help but wonder if we are repeating that history with how we perceive smartphones today.
I recently read about a ten-year-old girl in East Khasi Hills, Meghalaya, who tragically took her own life after her parents took away her phone. It’s a heartbreaking story that makes me feel like we, as a society, are failing to navigate this transition. We blame the device, but the device isn’t going away.
I can’t begin to grasp the pain those parents are feeling, but this tragedy feels like a collective failure to raise awareness about how these tools integrate into a child’s life. Is “smartphone addiction” the whole story, or is it a symptom of how we’ve failed to teach the positive side of the technology? We are doom-scrolling through social media when we have the entirety of human knowledge at our fingertips—the same information our parents said they walked miles to obtain.
Instead of just restricting access, why aren’t we teaching children to navigate the web responsibly? Traditional education feels less and less relevant when information is instant, yet we still treat these devices as toys or distractions rather than the most powerful tools ever created.
I have no problem with cat videos, but we need structure. Most phones already have “kid modes” and user profiles, but we rarely use them effectively. Labeling smartphones as “bad” or “harmful” feels as misguided as labeling books as “dangerous” 500 years ago.
It makes me wonder if it’s finally time to stop denying the benefits of these tools out of fear. We need to rethink how we utilize this technology—not by taking it away until it’s too late, but by maximizing its potential to actually improve our lives.