The Danger of Smartphones

Looking up and down the streets of downtown Los Angeles, it’s hard to go a single moment without seeing someone with a smart phone in hand.  This technology has seemingly been fixed to the palm of our hands with some sort of super glue.  While advances in communication devices have undoubtedly changed the speed of consumer interaction for the better, I fear that smart phones such as the iPhone, Blackberry, and Android devices have replaced canines as man’s best friend.  While an increasingly shrinking world has given us innumerable advances, new technology has taken away something that cannot be suitably recreated or replaced: the essential nuances and qualities of simple face-to-face interaction.

The modern smart phone has given people the ability to keep in constant contact with their family members, their employers and their closest friends, regardless of the vast distances between the two, but is that such a good thing?  While constant contact means quicker transmission of communication and event planning, the idea of always being “linked in” is somewhat chilling.  Often times I find that the most serene moment of my day is in the waning minutes of the night between when I turn off my cell phone and when I go to sleep.  There is something very peaceful about not being able to be reached.

An increase in the amount of smart phone usage coupled with an expanding social media market reflects an increase personal fear about being out of the loop – or left behind.  Public insecurity, as I like to call it, is fueled not by the desire to know more, but to not know less.  Certainly the increased time spent on these devices does indeed augment the number of people that we can be in conversations with at any given time, but I question the value and legitimacy of any conversation that takes an hour when a face-to-face interaction could have settled any dispute in a matter of minutes.

For many, these new-fangled devices offer an ever-present portal to the world of social media, for which I am beginning to develop a bad taste in my mouth towards.  Social media has the potential to be an overwhelmingly useful tool when it comes to keeping in touch with long lost friends, but I fear that websites like Facebook and Twitter have become social replacements as opposed to social supplements.  So often I notice that people sitting side by side in a dorm room will be sitting lazily on their chairs or beds perusing their friends’ Facebook pages, when they easily could be talking to one another.

Looking forward, I see a dichotomy taking form.  There are many people who are embracing social media, who marvel in the vast potential that such networking websites offer.  And yet there remain the conservatives, people like me who prefer traditional forms of communication and miss the more personal elements of regular face-to-face conversation.  Within this dichotomy lie two inevitable ends.  Either social media and smart phones will inevitably change the way that the world operates forever, or a counterculture will develop that lashes back against the scarily fast-developing new technologies.  I hope for the latter.

Along with this trend of ongoing social media and smart phone usage seems and increase in complacency and stagnation.  Too often I see my friends locked indoors, their eyes glued to their computer screens – when the weather is beautiful outside.  While I by no means claim to be a woodsman, or to have a gymnast’s body, the sight of people indoors on a sunny day irks me.  Moreover, I become genuinely confused as to just what it is that draws people ever closer to their computers and devices than the allure of nature.  Perhaps everyone else sees something that I don’t, but I think that if this trend continues, we can expect to live in a world very similar to that in the Pixar film, Wall-E.