By now there are scads of research on how our constant use of smart phones, cell phones with internet access, are affecting our behavior, perhaps causing an addiction, and certainly transforming our family relations and society. It may be technology overload, but many people cannot wait to read their emails or texts, delve into Facebook, or check the internet for the latest terrorist attack or national controversy. We have been living in the Information Age for more than one generation, and there is ample research to indicate the human brain is impacted: whether it’s checking emails or news updates every few minutes while carrying on conversations over dinner or becoming engrossed in e-chat or an e-article at work … or worse while driving.
Did you see the woman who, while on her smart phone and walking a loud city street, fell right into a manhole? What about young people listening to music from their ear buds while crossing busy streets? God gave us several senses for a reason, if not for mere self preservation. Maybe licenses should be issued in order to use smart phones while walking in public. How many more people on smart phones have to injure themselves or others?
There was the news report about kids getting easily bored and restless as their parents habitually check out the latest on their smart phones, the little kids referring to them as ‘dumb phones.’ Pretty clever. Though yet aged enough to be articulate, the kids perceived their parents’ smart phone interest as disinterest in the lives of their own children. So when kids get to be a certain age, many parents simply give them smart phones, too. What a big happy.
Call you back
Remember those public service announcements about fifteen years ago promoting a non-tech night or family night whereby everyone shuts off all cell phones and laptops—to spend quality time together? What happened to those family-centered ads? There is a generation now unaware that once there was a societal suggestion to turn off the technology especially at night. Now kids are growing up thinking ‘the family that techs together stays together’—like our technology keeps us all connected; better connected than ever before in human history; instantaneously connected; so much preferable to the old fashioned phone call, typed or hand-written letter, or car ride to grandma.
From what I’ve seen and experienced, having the internet in the palm of my hand has had a detrimental effect on relationships. Yet I would not want to live without it. I can turn it off, and I do before bed. But some people don’t turn off the internet in their hands, leaving their minds to obsess over the latest news or gossip. Gotta know what’s going on all the time everywhere. Kids have been known to actually sleep with a cell phone under their pillow, sometimes found to be the source of a fire in the middle of the night.
I was slow to join Facebook, not ever liking the way I look, unwilling to mug at the camera every so often to post an update. I know I’m aging. Why would I want everyone in the world to witness the graying, wrinkling, and additional pounds? But the best thing for me to come from Facebook is finding old classmates and acquaintances, even reuniting with them in person. That is indeed a fun part of our modern times. It is particularly interesting to see that some couples who married right out of high school still celebrating anniversaries decades later. That is quite a surprise, statistically speaking.
There are, too, the sad reports of battling cancer and other crises. There are the ones who air dirty laundry and shouldn’t on Facebook. There are those who simply re-post some inspirational quip or informative and cute video found online. As a writer, that inclination to re-post what another has written or taped makes no sense. How often have I been sucked into good writing about cancer or whatever topic only to find myself thinking after the first few sentences, “There is no way this person wrote this?” So I scroll on in hopes of finding original posts, which is becoming rarer by the day.
Brainstorm
“60 Minutes” investigated how individual smart phone use is monitored. Big Brother, so to speak, collects data on our news and shopping interests which we pursue on our devices—and then hooks us into similar articles to read and things to buy. That is in the end the purpose of smart phones, loaded with information and constantly updated for which we pay virtually nothing other than a phone bill or cable/internet bundle. We have to wade through the ads, handpicked just for us to lure us into buying stuff, in order to read what we want when we want … which is now.
Studies are showing that smart phones not only are addictive but create a short attention span, and this is exactly what students in school and college do not need. Multi tasking is actually impossible. The human brain handles very well only one (1) task at a time, not two, three, four or five. The latest brain research shows that whenever we start doing more than one thing at the same time, the quality of each task is greatly reduced (talking on the phone, reading emails, typing, driving). Instead of giving one hundred percent of our effort and attention to one task, we are divvying up the brain which itself determines the reduction: perhaps ten percent email comprehension, fifty percent conversation participation, twenty percent recipe following, and so on. We don’t decide the quality division; the brain does.
The brain is more Buddhist than we’d like to acknowledge. Is there really a difference between the brain and the mind? Maybe they are the same. In that regard, mindfulness—total concentration on one thing at a time—truly is the only way to a happy and productive life, one lived and enjoyed to full measure, every thought and especially every human emotion recalled in clarity and satisfaction. Smart phones may be turning our nation and world into a bunch of walking zombies: people who think their brains are growing due to all the recently accumulated knowledge and stuff but are really intellectually stunted, cluttered with confusion, unable to determine truth from lies, emotionally overwhelmed, and left wondering where did all the time go.