A thin metal rectangle sat on the white table in the bright room, its silver casing reflecting light onto the ceiling, still glistening thanks to being perfectly preserved.  The box-like structure was small and worn down; after all, it had been stored away for a hundred years, in a room miles beneath where it now laid, along with billions of others.  This was an important day for the modern world.  This was the first time an iPhone would be looked through.

Just behind this table, lights blinking and audio buzzing, two robots whirred in excitement, waiting patiently for the screen at the front of the room to load.  In a few moments, the social media connected to the phone would be projected onto the screen for the robots to analyze.  They were doing research on old ways of communication from the 21st century.  Finally, the screen lit up, and the robots clicked eagerly away at their control boards, anxiously awaiting the knowledge this box supposedly held.

A dozen colored squares appeared on the screen, each with a title below it.  The bots peered down at their instruction manual and found what they were looking for.  “Here it is,” said one to the other, tapping a few buttons as the multicolor icon was highlighted and the folder opened.

“Instagram,” said the second robot, scrolling through the page.  There were pictures everywhere.  They opened a post with a picture of a young girl on it.  “This is Adaline,” the robot said, looking at the post.

The next post on the page was a photo of another girl crying in the middle of a crowded room full of people eating.  “Cafeteria,” the first bot said, pointing to the screen.  As they scrolled through the comments, they read them out loud. 

“She is such a child.”

            “What was she crying about?”

            “She failed a test!  What a loser.” 

           

“Stop reading the comments, friend!”  the second bot cried out, antenna slowly changing color from a calm green to a nervous pink.  “Adaline was being mean!  Why would she share this online?” 

The first bot was confused as well.  “What a terrible friend she was being!”

They decided to move on from the photos and check other aspects of the application.  “Direct Messages- this sound like communication!”

Upon opening the messages, the robots were stunned.  

           

“Did you hear about the incident during math class today?”

            “No, what happened?”
            “This boy tripped outside and bruised his knee.  It was hilarious!  The whole class laughed!”

            “Don’t you think that’s kind of mean?”

            “No, somebody else kicked his books, too!  It was so funny.”

“I didn’t know people were so mean,” said the second robot.  “Let’s check a different icon.”  The robots clicked out of Instagram and onto a white and yellow square on the main screen.  “Snapchat,” the robot said.

“Yes,” the first bot replied as the application loaded.  They tapped some more and opened a chat.  There were many saved images in the chat that Adaline had sent, but they weren't pictures of Adaline at all.  They were all of a girl who seemed caught off guard, but not in a candid way; they were awkward and somehow wrong.  “She didn’t know anyone took these photos,” the robot remarked.

The second bot continued, metal swiftly clicking at the control board, and saw that Adaline had done this with many other people.  Sometimes there were even hateful comments.

           

“What were you thinking?”

            “You’re really ugly.”

            “That outfit is horrendous.”

           

Often, following words like these, there were replies from the people who were receiving the photos. 

           

“When did you take those?” 

The people would respond to the photos of themselves they didn’t know existed.

The bots closed out of the app in disgust and opened the icon of a bird on a blue background.  “Twitter.  Hopefully there will be something worthwhile on this one,” the first robot said as the screen loaded the Twitter threads.

Adaline’s phone was filled with negativity.  She complained about other students constantly and avoided kindness at all costs.  The chains of hate never seemed to end.  Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Tumblr...it continued on.  Every app offered a new way to talk behind someone’s back.  The robots had never imagined something as innocent as a little box of wires could cause so much harm;  after all, the robots were just boxes of wires themselves, whether they knew it or not.  Would this be the type of damage they would cause to the world in 100 years?  Or would the cost be much higher?

The robots quickly clicked out the phone, and one picked it up.  They rolled on their efficient wheels smoothly towards the open window nearby.  He threw it out the window and slammed it shut, as if the phone were to crawl back in through the opening.  Never again would they bother with the communication of the past.  A whole generation of study lost.  “How could people be so cruel to one another?”  In this new age, the humans were thought highly of.  Not anymore.

“This is why the world is in the state it is today.  The cruelty has existed forever.”

            “We have to destroy all of the phones; they are too full of bad things and terrible bullying.”

            Weeks later, the phones were removed from the tidy and unblemished repository and brought to a landfill where they were ground into the dirt.  The phones were over, and the media was finally dead.

-Nellie Cordi