My first cell phone looked like the kind of device that movie villains use to detonate bombs.
It had an LCD display slightly more sophisticated than a calculator. It was square. It was bulky. It had a flimsy antenna with a plastic nub at the tip that waggled in the wind, and the only “entertainment” contained within was a game called Snake, which involved manipulating a line of pixels ”“ the snake ”“ around the screen to try to gobble up a dot. It made Pac-Man look like virtual reality.
And those were the good old days.
Perhaps the smartphone-using technophobes among you are scratching your heads. How, you may ask, could those have possibly been the good old days when we live in an age of phones that can stream videos, identify music on the radio, purchase Amazon bric-a-brac, and set the heat levels on your waffle iron?
There’s no doubting that smartphones are capable of doing a heck of a lot. Some of the tasks they can perform occasionally pass as useful. There’s an iPhone app, for example, that uses the gadget’s electronic eye to read text on real-world signs and posters and translate it into any language of our choosing. Pretty nifty. If you’re an American in Japan, for example, and you feel nature calling, you can use the app to identify the men’s and women’s restrooms, thus saving you the embarrassment of having a roomful of pantless people screaming at you in horror.
The problem with smartphones, however, is easily demonstrated by a depressing and meandering anecdote. Every few weeks, a friend of mine has a game night in his home. The gang shows up, convenes around the kitchen table, and passes the evening with Cheese Doodles and board games ”“ Settlers of Catan, Trivial Pursuit and a bunch of other games that virtually guarantee none of us will ever experience the LA nightclub scene. This, if you’re as nerdy as we are, is a pleasant way to spend the evening with friends.
A month or two ago, however, the games remained in their boxes. The gang showed up, convened around the kitchen table, and pretty much just sat there, unable to decide on that night’s game. This would have been fine if the evening had been passed in pleasant conversation, but instead, everybody whipped out their phones, and it didn’t take long for a listless hush to fall over the room. Picture it: Seven or eight people seated around a table, silent, faces aglow with the light from their little screens.
Except for me. Because I refuse to buy a smartphone, the only thing I had to stare at was my bowl of Cheese Doodles.
Enter the smartphone era, in which real human contact ”“ and peaceful rest for our overworked gray matter ”“ plays second fiddle to streaming YouTube videos and instant recipes for organic gourmet tofu cupcakes. Such devices are a boon in a theoretical utopia where everyone has self control, and can resist the allure of playing Angry Birds while waiting in line for the Tilt-A-Whirl.
Unfortunately, most of us live in the real world, and in the real world, such distractions can cause problems.
Loren Frank, assistant professor of physiology at the University of California, San Francisco, was recently quoted in the New York Times as saying that downtime allows the brain to process experiences it’s had, helping to facilitate the learning process. And according to Times reporter Matt Richtel, researchers have found that the devices’ exposure to the developing minds of children and teens results in brains that are less able to sustain attention. Which may help explain why it takes repeated urging to get Little Timmy to mop up the Pepsi spill on the kitchen linoleum.
This portends unequivocal suckiness for the future. I envision a world of 15-second attention spans, glowing faces in front of glowing screens, and streets filled with flaming oil drums. (Or maybe that’s Terminator.)
Kids and teens might have the developing brains excuse. Adults have no such out. When they focus on their phones and nothing else, it’s just plain rude.
— Jeff Lagasse is a staff writer and columnist for the Journal Tribune, and if he wants to waste time at the supermarket, he’ll flip through bodybuilding magazines. He can be reached at 282-1535, Ext. 219, or jlagasse@journaltribune.com.
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