By Jay Jamison
For years family, friends and acquaintances have made fun of my refusal to get a smart phone. I usually cite my reluctance to get these phones based on fear of addiction, but cost is also a consideration. When some people can’t locate their phone, they often have the same look of panic that comes over smokers when they discover that they’re out of cigarettes. I’ve seen people walk into moving traffic while staring at their phones, as if the laws of physics no longer apply. This sort of behavior is not the fault of the phone, any more than we can rationally blame a gun for a robbery.
Some people crave their smart phones like addicts seeking a fix. For many of us our families, our friendships, and associations offer us a sense of meaning. Short circuit those attachments and we may become isolated and alone. Oddly enough, smart phones often lead to this separation, and the anxiety that comes from isolation. The devices that we’re told will bring us all together, are often the gadgets that keep us apart. We’ve all seen the couple sitting at the same table in a restaurant ignoring each other in silence as they stare at their phones. They might as well be on separate planets.
Watching TV, surfing the internet, and watching a movie are not exactly moments of calming reflection. Daily we are bombarded with well-produced advertisements on television and elsewhere, exhorting the good life, which is inferred through the purchase of something: a car, the perfect vacation package, the right beer, all illustrated by good-looking, happy people having the best of times.
Many people have succumbed to what has been called the tyranny of the urgent, that noisy clarion call from TV advertising to “act now, don’t delay, this is a limited time offer.” The jangling, vibrating phone also urgently demands our attention. Think of it as death by a thousand texts. In the past we sometimes had to run to answer the phone. Now the phone follows us around. Is it any wonder that today is marked by so many people in need of therapy? For too many people, the only time they can think and reflect on things that matter, is when they are asleep.
I’m not suggesting we all go back to some idealized contented past, which probably never existed. I happen to be writing this column on a laptop computer. However, I’ve never heard of, nor have I seen, a person walking across a busy street staring at a laptop computer, oblivious to the danger. Years ago, it never occurred to me that as a society we would someday feel compelled to enact laws against texting and driving. I remember driving south down Lincoln Avenue approaching Morton Avenue in Jacksonville. The light turned green, and I had a clear path, so I continued through the intersection. A white car blurred into view from the right and sped by mere inches in front of my car, just as the driver looked up from her phone. She’d missed the signal change as she sped down Morton. That wasn’t the phone’s fault. The day may come when some version of smart phones will be all that’s available, and I’ll probably have to buy one. In the meantime, I’ll stick with my flip phone and look both ways at intersections.
