And what if that actually was true? I was walking Pip the Dog one morning and I was a little later than usual, when often I pass some kids walking on their way to school.
Without fail every single one is holding a smart phone clutched in one hand and sometimes both hands, like some prized possession. And yes they are walking and staring at their phone all at the same time. They definitely can’t see where they are going. I often want to walk directly towards them with my arms open, but then I know that would get me into trouble big time, so I don’t.
I’m sure as a parent you have no idea that your kid is doing this, correct? I’ve even seen several kids walking together all staring at their phones. Wow, that’s a really sad situation.
When mobile phones first came out, we weren’t holding them in our hands whilst walking and staring at them, because there was nothing to stare at. We would get the phone out of our bag or briefcase when we needed to call someone or accept an incoming call. Now with the advent of smart phones they are not just phones, they are addiction devices.
Kids are addicted, adults are addicted, we’re all addicted to our phones.
Oh, by the way, it was a beautiful sunny day, fluffy clouds, birdsong, trees bending in the breeze and they missed all of it. They didn’t have a clue, the day passed them by, never to be experienced again.
I don’t blame the smartphone makers as such, I blame the app makers, the social media tech companies, whose sole objective has and always will be to make us totally addicted to their advertising engines.
I spent around 30 minutes sitting on a bench in the sunshine in the middle of a Birmingham City park. It was the middle of the day and many people were walking around and going about their daily routine. Maybe they were doing some shopping or maybe they were getting some lunch.
I couldn’t help but notice that most people were taking no notice of their surroundings, because they were all looking at their smartphones. Every now and again they had to look up because if they didn’t they might walk into a lamp post or even another zombie.
It’s a very sad result of us wishing to embrace technology. Furthermore what example are we setting for young people. They witness us behaving like zombies and they will copy our behaviour and actions too. Especially as they will be begging to get their own devices by the age of well maybe 7 or 8?
I also spent some time sitting in a coffee shop inside a shopping centre, doing some writing. I decided to pause my writing and look around at the people and I witnessed many groups of friends or maybe families walking together and every single person was walking with their smartphones in their hand. There was no conversation going on between them.
Do we all think this is normal or are have all become so addicted to our devices that we feel it’s more important to look at non-sense instead of spending time being fully present in the moment with our loved ones.
Listening to Tristan Harris recently during a live (recorded) Wisdom 2.0 conference, he recommended that we can do a couple of things to reduce our addiction to our smart phones. If you haven’t seen his TED Talk, you will enjoy it. WARNING: After watching his talk you will seriously change your habits in connection with your technology.
Switch off all notifications. By the way I’ve done that for the past couple of years and it’s made a huge difference in my attention and being present in the moment.
Switch the colours on your phone to ‘grayscale’. Now this one I didn’t know about and you can find it in your accessibility section. For the iPhone go to general>accessibility>display accommodations>colour filters and there make sure you switch colour filters to on.
I like this hack a lot. Not seeing the colours of those apps they become meaningless in your life and you will switch your attention to the useful apps that you need to use, instead of the mindless apps that you don’t need, like social media apps.
I have to say it looks weird, but I’m getting used to it.
The other tip that worked for me is to remove the Facebook app from my iPhone and iPad. Now I can only access Facebook by going to a browser on my iPad or my Mac. This is a major game changer, I’ve also paused my activity on Facebook altogether.
The very first concept of a Smartphone is said to have been envisioned back in the mid-1970s, but that idea didn’t come into fruition until almost 20 years later when IBM’s Simon Personal Communicator first showed its face in 1992.
Most of us will consider that Apple’s release of the iPhone in 2007 was the start of the smartphone revolution. It probably made the smartphone a commercial success and killed all the others off in the process although they didn’t know it yet until years later.
Today your smartphone has become an extension of your hand and occupies a large part of your brain too. You have literally hard wired your brain to be connected to your smartphone almost all of the time. If it’s not actually on your person, you will very likely be wondering where it is, wanting it to be back in your immediate surroundings, preferably your hand or at least where you can see it. Tethered to your power lead, making sure it has enough battery life in the worry that it might actually run out.
Most of us complain of not having enough battery life although manufacturers have been increasing battery life every single year and whenever a new smartphone comes out. It may even be one of the biggest reasons, subconsciously of course, that we upgrade our phones every year, when actually there’s no need to. It’s an illusion that you need more battery life. The reason your battery goes down so fast is that you spend more time thumbing your way through it, more than you ever did.
Remember before smartphones, if you are old enough, there was nothing to do on the mobiles of those early days, apart from making calls and texting, the battery used to last for days. And batteries today are thinner and last longer and because we’re constantly on them it means the battery is being used constantly.
Not the manufacturer’s fault, it’s your fault.
You place your smartphone by your bed at night and pick it up first thing in the morning. You check it more than 100 times per day at least, at the very least.
It is so bad that it’s believed that research needs to take place into the psychodynamics of these technologies, in terms of the emotional and possibly psychopathological function they are serving in people’s lives.
Next time you pick up your smartphone just know that your brain can’t function without it, you are literally hardwired and addicted.
