I read an article today about how more and more people are making a conscious effort to ditch their smartphones. Mostly it’s because they feel they are wasting too much time on them but also they feel their mental health is suffering.
The people in the article are either switching to an old Nokia style phone with calling and texting only, or they’re just getting rid of all phone technology and working through their computer.
I’m not sure how no phone at all works. I hate making phone calls but, seriously, you really need one. After all, while smartphones have only been around since 2008, the telephone has been part of our lives for considerably longer.
The article I read was in Surrey Life. It intrigued me enough to search out how mental health is affected by excessive smartphone use.
I found this article from 2020 which shows how smartphones are making children suffer from increased mental health issues. I guess it’s the equivalent of religion in my youth.
That sounds a bit odd so, let me explain.
As Marx said, religion is the opiate of the masses. It dictates what you do and don’t do, it makes all your decisions for you, it keeps you quiet and numbs you to the reality of the world around you. Religion is all about control. The fact that it’s such ridiculous nonsense just shows how easily fooled human beings are.
But how are smartphones any different?
I see so many people walking around, looking at their screens (and not always for navigation), oblivious to anything or anyone around them. What, exactly, is their sense of the world? Is their entire social life within their phones?
Don’t get me wrong. I have a smartphone and I use it a lot. Sadly, I spend too much time on Twitter and Instagram though these are my only two social media platforms. I use my phone for banking, email, texting (Signal), shopping list, podcasts, music on the Sonos, TMS during test match cricket, all sorts of things. One thing I don’t do, though, is walk around looking at it.
Okay, as Nicktor would no doubt say, I couldn’t walk around, looking at my phone because I’d just fall over. And he’d have a point. However, I haven’t always been incapable of walking unaided and, even then, I didn’t walk and watch.
There are a number of teenagers that I pass on the way to the shops, and they are all walking and watching. Hunched over, eyes turned inward. What are they watching, I wonder?
I see a future where the world is governed by the clever people who didn’t have smartphones as kids, guiding the dumb ones who did. Like people in countries controlled by religion who are led by the intentions of imaginary beings and an eternity of spite.
I should add that I’m not judging. I have no kids and couldn’t care less about how people bring up their own. Why should it make any difference to me? It doesn’t. Plain and simple.
In fact, I’d rather stand in the garden and admire a blue sky with contrails speeding across it. That’s much more satisfying than the dumbing down of children.
High proportions of youth engage in heavy smartphone use and media multitasking, with resultant chronic sleep deprivation, and negative effects on cognitive control, academic performance and socioemotional functioning.
Abi-Jaoude, Elia et al. “Smartphones, social media use and youth mental health.” CMAJ : Canadian Medical Association journal = journal de l’Association medicale canadienne vol. 192,6 (2020): E136-E141. doi:10.1503/cmaj.190434
