Is A Picture Really Worth 1000 Words?

“These days, anyone with a smart phone (equipped with a camera and/or video recorder) is close to having a portable archivist. And indeed, many say that when they don’t use their mobile phone to document their lives, they feel remiss, guilty for not doing so” Sherry Turckle wrote in her book Alone Together. In the book, she refers to this phenomenon as “life capture” and she discusses the issues for people who constantly feel the need to record every minute of their lives. She poses the question “If technology remembers for us will we remember less?” There is a massive rise in popularity of cell phones with cameras installed within, I personally do not know a single person who does not have a cell phone with a cameria installed, do you? It is not surprising that pretty much everywhere we go they we witness a picture being taken or have our picture taken. The once enjoyed luxury of taking pictures and making memories has become such a passive and common act, occurring so frequently (too frequently?) , that it has lost its uniqueness and the extraordinary power that accompanies a special photograph with meaning behind it. It is now primarily used to create an online version of ourselves on a virtual online world Facebook to be used to embellish, impress, and show off our lives to others in addition to archiving our lives to look back on in the future.

Technology has become a major part of our lives both socially and intellectually. Socially, technology interferes with our lives because it has made archiving life’s everyday events far too important. Alternatively, in an intellectual sense, technology has enabled the brain to have a larger capacity for remembering more relevant information instead of cluttering it with useless knowledge.

Teenagers today are taking this memory tool, the camera, to a whole new level. They are becoming obsessed with Facebook and uploading pictures for all their online friends to see. We are not living our lives to the fullest and instead we are shaping our lives around this Facebook world where we simply use the camera to “produce an impressive Facebook profile” says Turckle.  In today’s new day and age life recording has become such a big deal that it could has become a distraction and possible a burden on people. Instead of living our lives in the present, because of this need users feel to constantly record, we are spending our present lives trying to create an archive for our future selves. What happened to living in the present and enjoying the “now”? People have started doing everything for future benefit, but if this keeps up we may never be able to enjoy our lives as we live them in the present since we are so focused on archiving for the future.

Nobody takes the time to write down his or her memories anymore, instead we believe taking a picture can replace a written memory. For example, when people travel to new places, they occasionally keep a written journal in order to remember the thoughts, feelings and experiences that a picture cannot capture. Since today, technology, in essense “remembers for us” and these journals are not kept as much anymore. I remember when I went to Disney World with my family, every night, my parents made me and my brothers write a paragraph or 2 (or for my littlest brother a couple words or scribbles) each night describing our day and feelings we experienced at the amusement park aka favorite rides, how we felt meeting our favorite characters, etc… something a picture cannot capture. When was the last time you did this? Not for a while (if ever) I’m assuming.

Is a picture really worth 1000 words? Or is it more advantageous to keep a journal and write down our memories rather than taking a snapshot? It’s the memory that recalls the feelings and experiences within the picture, and if that memory is forgotten, it is gone, but it can be captured and saved forever with words.

Although I too am guilty of taking WAY too many pictures instead of focusing on enjoying the event and having fun, I believe this obsession with pictures needs to die down. Individuals should pay more attention to what matters in life and, perhaps, less attention to recording every mundane act for posterity. Life, and one’s overall contentment with it, is more about remembering experiences and the sentiments that are associated with them than remembering the events captured in a photo to post on Facebook to make it seem like we are having fun. I think we have to use technology in a smart way. We need to be knowledgeable in how and why we are using it. We need to live in the now and stop worrying about archiving for the future and embellishing our online Facebook profiles. Is archived life truly living?