Less than 10 years ago, if you had a cell phone in high school, you were one of the lucky few. Nowadays if you don't have one by the end of grade school you are potentially a societal outcast. The greatest threat that cell phones bring as they reach the pockets of virtually every adult is that they are slowly consuming more and more of our time. First they were just used for calling and the occasional game of snake. Then people seemed to go crazy with texting (and some still do). Cell phones are becoming more like a small laptop, and coincidentally are turning society into robots. More people are punching at their touch screen and families are fighting for interaction as our phone's consume our attention. As tablets get smaller and more portable, it's fearful to wonder if we will eventually walk around with our phones and never see the world around us, just our small virtual screen.
http://www.awn.com/blogs/im-game/what-s-future-slates-tablets-and-ipads
I think this is a big problem that we're going to have to address, and I think part of the problem is that kids are finding what's on their phones more appealing than the world that's going on in front of them.
ReplyDeleteWhat I find scary is the amount of information our phone knows about us. In fact, they know so much about us and our patterns, behaviors, and social circles, researchers claim to be able to predict when someone is coming down with the flu before they even realize they are getting sick. Check out this article from the Wall Street Journal:
ReplyDeletehttp://on.wsj.com/lCewyf
Scary but true. So when do you think it's appropriate for children to have phones of their own?
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