And after what seems like an endless conveyor-belt of stories on her Facebook news feed, she finds herself looking at something she already saw, and realises that she has been on Facebook for way too long. With two clicks and a press, she finds herself on Snapchat.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Her thumb mindlessly wades through hours of Snapchat stories, documented in noisy clubs, hipster cafes and college campuses. Her eyes take in frame after frame of badly-taken food photos, pretty faces of girls with dog snouts on them and distorted facial expressions. She puts filters on her own face, and amuses herself.
And soon enough, with two clicks and a press, she has wandered into the world of blue, blue Twitter. She scrolls through hundreds of mini blog posts that seem to amuse, offend, and interest her all at the same time. She taps on the little hearts, inviting a burst of red to symbolize her approval for a friend's funny thought. But as the swish of the timeline reveals zero new tweets, she moves on.
She teleports to Instagram, the vast world of visual images, moving and non-moving. Perfectly edited and symmetrical, she indulges in pictures of architecture, art and culture. And the food pictures, oh! What a stark contrast to the grainy cuisines on Snapchat. Other girls sweetly tucking their hair behind their ears, looking down at the ants on the gravel, being photographed by a compliant boyfriend admiring her beauty in a square frame. She wonders if she will ever experience the same thing.
Then a breeze moves across her face, and the voice of her baby brother chimes: "Look! Look what I found!" He holds up a bright, white dandelion, a brilliant grin plastered across his rosy cheeks.
She smiles, sets down her precious screen, and joins her brother in the warm, sunny backyard.
"That's a dandelion!" she tells him.
*
