Over the long weekend I had the opportunity to do some people-watching. One thing I noticed that was common to almost everyone I saw – a smart phone. This is not something new. I believe I have mentioned such an observation more than once over the past few years.
I, being an old faht, remember the days when cell phones didn’t exist. Phones were connected via wires, there was no texting, and answering machines didn’t really come into general use until the late 1980’s. Today ‘phones’ also text, navigate, take pictures and record video, play games, and even make phone calls. Today there is more ability for humans to communicate than any time in history, whether it’s between people in the same building or on the other side of the world, be it by voice, text, or video. Yet with all of this marvelous technology making communications ubiquitous we seem to be communicating less than we have in the past. It is a paradox.
We ‘talk’ more but say less. We miss nuances that can change the meaning of what’s been said. This last is particularly true of texting, something that both I and one of the WP nieces can attest due to a number of online debates that became contentious because of the missing nuances. When we are face-to-face the contentiousness vanishes.
Something else I’ve noticed?
People become anxious if they are separated from their phones. I have seen people panicking when they find they’ve left their phone someplace (usually either at home or in their car) and it isn’t in their possession. It seems some folks feel like they don’t exist if they don’t have their phones with them at all times.
I have actually asked people if they feel anxious or nervous if they find they’ve left their phones at home or wherever. The people who most often answered ‘no’ were older (like me) while the younger the respondent the more often the answer was ‘yes’.
I have to wonder if it is a manifestation of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) if they have no access to SMS, Twitter, SnapChat, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook and can’t get immediate feedback to the things they post. This brings up another negative of this incredible ability to communicate.
Disconnection from reality.
To so many people their phone is their connection to an alternate reality. To them the most important parts of their lives can only be reached through their phones. But those lives aren’t real. They are electronic chimera, a “Through The Looking Glass” existence. Real life becomes less real, less important. But they can’t or won’t give them up. They are addicted.
That’s scary.
And then there are human relations, specifically of the ‘romantic’ type. The old-fashioned ways of meeting someone have faded away to be replaced by dating apps like Match.com, Tinder, Bumble, FarmersOnly, and a host of others. The problem with so many of them is that they have devolved from dating apps to ‘hook-up’ apps for sexual assignations. It’s all too easy to look through hundreds of profiles for matches, swiping left or right to reject or accept a match. But how many of these matches ever evolve into something beyond a transitory sexual connection?
How may of you have walked into a break room/lunch room/cafeteria full of people only to realize that only a few of the people are actually talking to each other? The rest have their heads bowed over their phones texting people elsewhere...or just across the table from them. The don’t actually talk to each other any more.
How many have attended a family gathering only to see a number of family members more interested in what’s on their phones and not the family surrounding them? I saw that happen one Thanksgiving at The Manse, with a number of the younger members of the WP Clan spending more time texting their friends back home rather than interacting with cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents right in front of them. We solved that problem by making those younger family members shut off their phones and give them to their parents who would return them just before they left for home, something a few of them protested vehemently against. But in the end they gave in. From that point on it was the rule that their phones would be turned off and put away when they were attending family gatherings.
Smart phones are wonderful things, but like any technology they are a two-edged sword. They enable worldwide communications and access to information and knowledge to a level unprecedented in human history. But they can also beguile and ensnare the unwary and can disconnect them from the real world and suck them into a world that exists only cyberspace. That isn’t healthy. It isn’t desirable.
We have to find a way to strike a balance. It isn’t going to be easy...but it must be done.
