College students take many things for granted: money, family, friends — but I never thought walking would be on the list.

A recent trend on campus has me bringing my palm to my face more than ever—this trend being 2-wheel self-balancing electric scooters.

This scooter is essentially a hands-free Segway device. To paint a clear picture of this device, I will tell you about a personal experience.

It was a cold October night. I was walking back to my house after a meeting on campus. I was pretty on-edge because of all the crime that had recently occurred. As I hastily made my way home, I was startled by a noise in the distance.

At first I thought it was someone yelling, but as I walked closer, I could hear it was really the lyrics to “Cheerleader” by OMI.

I turned the corner and saw the source of the noise—a self-balancing electric scooter. The lights were turned on, flashing different colors with the beat of the music.

When the person riding it spotted me, I can only assume what he did next was an attempt to impress me. He struggled to spin his electronic hands-free scooter in a circle, suddenly falling on his face from leaning too far to steer.

Right as he fell the lyric “Do you think I’m pretty/Do I make you feel like cheating?” came out of the speaker on his device, and I looked at him scurrying to get back on the scooter and I was literally like, “No, not really.”

The moral of the story is that electronic hands-free scooters only accomplish one thing—making its user look like a fool. I cannot see any benefits of owning this device. I could almost understand its popularity if the device was a groundbreaking tool that vastly improved transportation, but it is not. In fact it is the opposite. The user travels at a pace similar to a student late to their class—not fast, but not slow.

In addition, there’s the hassle one has to go through just to be able to ride it. Since the steering is balance based, it is easy to humiliate oneself. As the story demonstrated, if you lean too far one way or another, it will end in a devastating and embarrassing fall.

It is funny to watch the scooter riders try to navigate around obstacles, such as stairs and doorways. They waste so much of their time doing simple things that would have been easier had they chosen to walk.

You cannot ride the scooter in the rain or snow. It is only useful during times of good weather. There are better ways to waste your money. You could buy a couple of really nice pairs of shoes or rent a puppy for a week.

If you are considering buying an electronic self-balancing scooter, save your money and just wear a sign that says, “I have money and don’t know how to spend it.”

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