By Keith C. Milne
We’ve all seen them, you know, the idiots who walk around, drive around, bike around while endlessly staring at their “smartphone” screen nearly the entire time they are moving or, more accurately, nearly the entire time they are doing ANYTHING, while only half paying attention, at best, to the world around them.
It does take a pretty hefty amount of freestyle movement acumen in order to negotiate situations that arise suddenly and unexpectedly that might threaten someones health and well-being without notice or warning, while only half paying attention.
That said, if you are someone who is engaging in this behavior, you are single-handedly deciding that your miraculous senses that you have to protect you from running into a light pole, stepping off of a cliff, or getting hit by a car are less important than reading another idiotic post, or watching another pointless video on TikTok. You’re an idiot!
It makes sense to me that most of the idiots I see doing this are young people age 10-40, and I get it that you have to get into a fight to really learn if you can take a punch, but the forty-somethings should have already experienced enough of life’s misfortune to know better, so the name I have reserved for folks who engage in this behavior once past the age of forty are “ultra idiots.”
The school of hard knocks surely paid you a visit a few times in your life, so if you’re ignoring all of that first hand knowledge about engaging in movement while not paying attention, then you’re likely an extremely fortunate person who is also clueless about almost everything and are damned lucky that you’re still in one piece or you just haven’t timed your stupidity well enough yet, which is also understandable considering how new these technologies are and how little time you’ve had to practice being an ultra stupid individual.
People driving 80 miles per hour on the Interstate while it’s pouring down rain and visibility is seriously compromised. There they are, being ultra stupid and staring down at their screen while half paying attention to the road.
Walking along during commute hour, completely GONE because they are in the middle of a video call with their partner, laughing, crying, shouting at, talking a million miles an hour, completely oblivious to their surroundings, the horns being honked as they step into the jam packed four-way intersection against the red light, holding everyone up and then taking their time going diagonally across the entire intersection while several hundred people have to wait.
Couples not talking or making eye contact at restaurants while waiting for food or drink because they are both texting, checking their social media accounts, or chatting or talking with a third party! I’ve seen this with young couples and older couples. And this extends to larger gatherings. In fact, it seems that the larger the gathering, the more you’ll see this being done by the people seated near the less talkative guests. They will get bored and start looking at social media or the internet or checking their email while sitting at the table.
People have been robbed while putting groceries in the car while talking to a friend and didn’t notice the robber coming up from behind. Another person texting while sitting at a red light and was completely oblivious to the carjacker until he suddenly appeared in your now open driver’s door and pointing a 9mm pistol at you.
Now that many of you still have had more flexible work scenarios due to COVID-19’s impact on the workplace, we all have become conditioned to not even care who is doing this now, where they do it, or how often, even when the occasion is special! It still gets excused or is accepted now that we all have these devices that are not just phones, but have become their own version of Swiss Army Knives.
They hold our calendars and reminders, and then notify us about upcoming events in our lives that we do not want to miss or forget about in advance. They are our contacts, our GPS to help us find out how to get to various places, and then they guide us there with turn-by-turn instructions. Additionally, these devices will detect if you’ve been in an accident or fallen and will call emergency services for you if you’re unable to call them yourself.
With these devices we have the world in the palm of our hands now, and it’s very tempting to believe that what’s online is more important than Grandmother’s birthday party at the restaurant or Dad’s birthday party around the dining room table. The second a ding, or dong, or chirp, or tinkling or similar sound emits from our device, we immediately look away from Grandmother or Dad to look at our screen to see what or who needs our attention. It happens in a millisecond and is as automatic as a reflex. Unfortunately, once our attention is diverted, we have a hard time coming back to reality again, or at least doing it quickly.
People have been injuring themselves at an unprecedented levels because of not paying attention while using one of these so-called, “smart” devices or “smartphones.” Currently, approximately 3000 people each year die from distracted driving related to smart phone use. Many of the accidents from distracted driving, as well as the myriad other types of accidents that happen while being distracted from cell phone/smartphone use stems from smartphone use addiction.
In one study conducted in South Korea on 608 college students and published in the NIH to study any correlation between smartphone use and rates of accidents concluded that, “smartphone addiction was significantly associated with total accident, falling/slipping, and bumps/collisions. This finding highlighted the need for increased awareness of the risk of accidents with smartphone addiction.”
Human beings are visual creatures by nature. Looking at moving objects on a screen with super high “retinal” display is almost impossible to ignore, and it is absolutely impossible for someone addicted to their device. They spend as much as 16 hours or more per day chronically and compulsively checking and rechecking their media, their accounts, and their posts for the positive feedback rewards that caused them to become addicted in the first place.
The design of these devices in tandem with our culture attempting to digitize and put everything online, transmitted to you lightning fast from the cloud (someone’s server) is just too convenient, too rewarding to pass on. I get it. I use a really advanced device myself. I cannot believe the insanely perfect and gorgeous photographs my device is capable of, the insane speediness of getting data, pictures, streaming content from a subscription venue while waiting to be seen at the doctors office, something I find exceptional as a technological accomplishment, but also exceptionally enticing and rewarding to use.
Walk into a store and when you go to check out there is no need to count cash, write a check, or find the right card to swipe. Just tap your phone or smartwatch on the payment kiosk and in less than 3 seconds you’ve paid for the item you intended to purchase and you have a receipt in your hand or emailed to you. All that and the clerk never even got your real credit card information! That is an on purpose security feature designed to keep digital payment platform methods safe, and those who use them safe from fraud.
The whole topic is hard to reconcile. The constant double-edged sword that technology seems to offer. Instant gratification and knowledge; instant payments; instant connecting with other people; instant feedback; instant directions; an e-reader for your Kindle books; a high-end and very capable camera; an awesome music player; and on and on and on.
The dark side though is constant distraction so you “learn” to be somewhat scattered and inefficient. You now split your attention all the time, even when your phone is somewhere else on purpose. It trains people to have short attention span. It trains people to keep looking at it otherwise they might miss out on something funny or important. You put your own senses off to the side and focus on that little screen with all your might. Little-by-little it begins to claim more and more of your day. You read your news with it, watch Netflix on it, talk to your boss on it, and read and compose your email on it. You text everyone you know with it. And many more people are beginning to fall into the abyss of online addiction.
Indeed, “Smartphones” Have Made Smart People Stupid For Choosing To Park Their Senses On The Side Of The Road As They Fall Deeper Into A Trance While Staring At Their Screens! I’m not trying to convince you to stop using a smartphone and go back to a flip phone so you only make real voice phone calls. I’m asking you to perhaps take stock of you own personal usage pattern and habit. You might find that you will want to scale back the total amount of time you’re spending on your device(s) during each day.
If so, I hope you will reallocate that reclaimed time to engage in more useful activities. Take a walk. Rekindle a friendship that went to the wayside for seemingly no reason. Read a book! When was the last time you actually held a real book in your hands instead of using a kindle app on your phone or tablet? Start an exercise regimen, stretch more, maybe take up Yoga. Much better use of that time.
Choose to only spend so many hours per day doing anything with your phone. After that, go put it in the charger and turn off the ringer.
When driving, walking, hiking, biking, roller skating, or doing anything that moves you forward, be smart and DON’T DO THESE THINGS WHILE NOT PAYING ATTENTION TO THAT ACTIVITY ONLY! Save the social media, pictures, porn, television show, Facebook posts, etc., for when you actually arrive safely at your destination.
It’s not that hard. For real. Trust me. Just put it away and leave it there until you get where you’re going. When you use it at your destination, please continue your new level of being aware by only using it if it’s absolutely necessary, and then keep it short, text back that you’ll call them back or text back more later, and for heavens sake, be respectful of others, especially when you’re a guest in someone else’s home, and step outside to conduct this brief business.
Implementing these little new habits will improve your odds of living to be as old as I am enormously. If your life ends up being half as interesting as mine has been, then you’ll want to maximize your odds of being able to stick around for all the acts still to come.