There are many people who get quite upset when someone tells them that they shouldn't be on their cell phones or their computers so much. In a way, I understand them--we really shouldn't tell others what they should and shouldn't do with their lives (and I just did what I said we shouldn't do simply to make the point of how easy it is to do so). We get defensive when someone else tells us that we're doing something wrong and that we need to change.
I think that rather than telling people what to do or not to do, we should make it our goal to try to educate them about what may happen if they don't change things up. We need to educate others on what they're choosing to miss out on if they continue on their present course.
I truly dislike cell phones and the ways that they control people. I can't get too upset with the people who are addicted to them because they're simply responding to an incredible amount of advertising and marketing designed to manipulate them into thinking that these phones are actually necessary The marketers also tell them that they'll be happier people the more "connected" they become via social media and other apps that are designed more to set the hooks more deeply into them than they're designed to help them to have happy lives.
After all, the bottom line is this: The more addicted you become to your phone, the more money a lot of people make off of you. But most of us look at our addictions only as far as they're fulfilling a need or a want. We don't want to think that the alcohol industry wants us to be addicted to alcohol so that they'll have a steady stream of income from us; the candy industry wants us to be addicted to their candy so that they'll be getting our money regularly; and the phone and app makers and the service providers want us to be addicted to our phones because they make lots of money because of our devotion to paying for their devices and services. But all we look at is: I want to check my email when I want, I want to talk on the phone when I want, or I want to take selfies when I want.
Remember when many people finally bought a cell phone, but only with the promise that it was "only for emergencies"?
What I try to get people to realize, though, is what they miss from life when they're constantly on their phones. When I walk into my classes at the university these days, they're pretty much always quiet--at least nine of ten of the students are focused on their screens, and the other few students are sitting quietly waiting for class to start, unable to talk to their neighbors who are focused on their screens. When I was a student, I met more people before classes than I did in almost any other situation. I would talk to the person sitting next to me, and they would actually talk, also. If you liked the person you sat next to, it was worth it getting to class five or ten minutes early to have a longer chat, or to suggest a cup of coffee or something after class. That doesn't happen any more. It's really kind of spooky and disconcerting to walk into classrooms that have 30 people sitting in them, but that are dead quiet. So many opportunities for knowing other human beings are being lost, every single day because we're so attached to our screens.
I also want to teach people just how we lose our ability to focus on the here and now when we're on the phone with someone who's there, not here. We were once on vacation with a friend of the family, and this person was constantly getting calls from her husband. Instead of being able to enjoy the beautiful scenery and peacefulness of where we were, she was constantly being pulled from the moment to argue with her husband about something back home, or to tell him where something was, or to have a long discussion about something involving their house. I really wanted to take her phone from her and throw it into the bay because every time she started arguing with him, we had to be party to the argument, and we lost the beauty of the present moment, also. To this day I still don't understand why she refused to turn her phone off, even though several times she said she should do just that.
"You should," both my wife and I agreed with her. She never did.
What always shocks me, though, is just how much people are paying for these things. In addition to the outrageous price for the phone itself--which most people replace every two or three years, at least--there's the monthly fees for the phone service, for the GPS, for the music service, or for the myriad of other services that simply nickel-and-dime people to death. Many people are paying over $200 a month simply for phone services, and that's a huge amount of money--$2400 a year, or enough for a new car every eight or nine years.
I don't want to get too far into the "when I was a kid" approach to looking at life, but here goes: When I was a kid, we had one phone, it stayed at home, and we paid $15-20 a month for the service.
And we were fine. In many ways we could argue that we were actually better off because we had fewer addictions than our populace faces today.
Could you leave your phone at home for a day without pining for it and wishing you had it with you every moment? Why don't you try it? See how many more birds you hear singing; find out how many more people can you look in the eye and greet warmly; learn how many flowers you walk by each day without noticing them. Feel the breeze and listen to it in your ears instead of listening to the same songs over and over again on Pandora. Stay focused on the present moment where you are right now instead of talking so much to people who are in other places. Revel in the ability to sit down and not feel pressure to call or text someone while you have a few "free" moments (which aren't free any more once you decide to use them texting). Watch the clouds roll by or roll in; listen to the kids playing; hear laughter that isn't coming to you through a speaker.
If we truly want to live life fully, we have to be multi-dimensional. We must be aware of the world around us and the needs of the people we're with. Phones make us uni-dimensional, and they keep us focused on things that aren't truly a part of the reality in which we find ourselves (and no, I don't buy the argument that things that come over the phone are part of our reality because they're coming over the phone, for valid reasons that I'll address later). Our connections to our phones are carefully crafted addictions that we either can't or won't recognize as such, and we're paying dearly for our addiction, both in cash and in the loss of our connection to the world to which we belong.
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