Have you noticed how much people have become addicted to their mobile phones? A survey showed that 66% of users are afraid to be separated from them and 41% own more than one. What's disturbing among the younger generation especially is that face to face interaction and its associated emotional development is being lost in favour of an addiction to texting, facebook and twitter via their handset. I first began witnessing phone addiction in the corporate workplace around 2002. In fact, having a mobile phone had become a status symbol, but these days it's hard to imagine someone without one.
What concerns me are the smartphone game aps that encourage users to pay for their addiction and which can lead to gambling addiction later on. In America a game called Candy Crush Saga has commuters (in particular) spending all their travelling time playing it, and some spend hundreds of dollar per week during their daily journeys to and from work. It may be old fashioned thinking but whatever happened to reading books and conversing? It looks to me that the world is being dumbed down enough without this serious incursion on people's mental health and well being. It's like gambling - its unashamed advertising of all sorts appears on television as if it's a harmless pastime without consequences, and yet alcohol and cigarette advertising are banned.
An over-indulgence in being 'connected' can't be good for us. What does it say about a society when a large proportion of its people turn to their phone for comfort and reassurance, fearing to be without it, and interacting with the world through it instead of communicating naturally and developing of social skills? Taking time out, reflecting on life (downtime) is increasingly disappearing because whenever there's a break from proceedings a person immediately turns to their phone. It's almost as if they have a 'free thinking' phobia and have to receive external stimuli to generate their thoughts and life processes. That's sad!
It's easy to label it as part of the conspiracy to dumb-down and distract, but is it? A lot has been said about inane TV which chucks out an endlessly banal supply of soaps, reality shows and celebrity trivia, but is there really some power/s behind the scenes aiming to make the masses stupid? Or is it more a case of commercial exploitation (games, gambling) and network rivalry for advertising (television and radio)?
I'm happy to say (without a sneer!) that I have just a regular mobile phone and about 75% of the time I forget to take it with me when I go out! But I have an advantage - the signal where I moved to is very poor, and actually I'm glad of that. Yesterday I went for a coffee and believe it or not, among the laptop users and phone addicts someone was reading . . .
. . . a book!!!