This morning I awoke to discover I had no internet access. I don’t mean
that after a leisurely breakfast and shower I eventually sat down to my
computer and couldn’t get online. I mean I literally “awoke to discover” it,
because the first thing I did when my eyes opened was to grab the cell phone
from my night stand and check my emails. My inability to do so immediately left
me as agitated as a junky in need of a fix, highlighting for me just how
addicted I, like countless others, have become to being perpetually connected
to the outside world through my phone.
Except that it doesn’t really connect me at all; if anything, my phone disconnects me from the outside world. Yes,
it links me to a multiverse of information and distractions. But there is
something about experiencing the world through the addictive central
portal of a smartphone that creates
a psychological and spiritual distance from the experience and from the world
itself.
Recently I saw a two-minute film being shared on Facebook called I Forgot My Phone. In it we follow a young woman through a
day in which she is surrounded by friends but ends up feeling alienated and
alone even in the midst of them. It’s an amusingly familiar but ultimately bleak
picture of how smartphones in today’s mobile age change the way people
experience each other and the world.
She wakes up in the arms of her boyfriend (husband?), but rather than
sharing the intimate moment, he scrolls through his cell phone. She’s at lunch
with friends when the chatter devolves into silence as everyone focuses on his
or her phone. She’s bowling with friends and looking for a high five, but her
teammates leave her hanging because they’re immersed in their cell phones. She attends
a concert in a small club where people are watching the band – on their cell
phones. She’s at her own birthday party, which everyone experiences indirectly through
their tiny phone screens. At the end of the day she’s back in her boyfriend’s
arms; she turns off the light, only to have her face illuminated by the light
from his cell phone, which he is scrolling through. He is connected to an
illusion of innumerable places and people and possibilities, and completely
disconnected from what should have mattered most, the woman in his arms and
their moment together.
In 1978 Jerry Mander’s
controversial book Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television
posited that there are serious problems inherent in the medium of television
that make it irredeemable. It affects the psychology of viewers, increases passivity,
makes people more susceptible to control, changes family dynamics, alters our
understanding of nature, and flattens perception. The same can be said for
smartphones.
I’m no Luddite; I wouldn’t suggest for a moment that we “eliminate” (if
that were even possible) today’s technological advances that would seem, in
past eras, indistinguishable from magic. But perhaps it’s time for a Four Arguments for Our Liberation from Smartphone
Addiction. As my eyes opened in
bed this morning, I didn’t even take time to ground myself in my own thoughts
and senses and surroundings, or to acknowledge my wife at my side. We need to
remind ourselves where to draw the line, when to detach from technology’s hold
on our consciousness, and how to maintain a perpetual connection not to the
internet cosmos, but to our interior selves and our loved ones.
(This article originally appeared here on Acculturated, 9/16/13)
