My 17yo said something striking earlier this week; he said, "Smartphones are like refined sugar for the brain." This is my curmudgeonly kid, he of "E equals m c get off my lawn!" fame, but I think he's onto something anyway.
Are you weary of these complaints about phones, my friends? I do not mean to keep beating the same tired drum, but it seems to me that with every passing month phones become more intrusive. People did not use to text in our church, or bring iPads for their kids to play games on during Mass. And now they do. It used to be clear to people that you shouldn't text while skateboarding, because you might hurt yourself or somebody else. And yet I've encountered two texting skateboarders during the past month. When I walked across our pretty sun-dappled quad during finals week, it seemed that every student held a phone -- even though the sun-dappled-ness of the quad means it's hard to see what you're being notified of when the phone buzzes.
It is not news that people text while driving, but the scope of it is discouraging nonetheless. For long millennia, human beings survived without sending texts in transit. It's only in the past -- what, 15 years? -- of human existence that it's even been possible to text at a traffic light. Clearly the survival of the species does not rest on a person's capacity to send a particular text RIGHT NOW. And yet a surprising number of drivers seem to find that assertion unpersuasive.
A person who just blogged about making a 12-layer cake is not going to say that we should ban sugar. But a person who has blogged for years about her compulsive relationship with sugar is absolutely going to suggest that limits are healthy. I don't know what the cell phone analog to "no sweets before lunchtime" or "no ice cream until after dinner" would be. I don't lead a life in which my phone buzzes urgently on a regular basis, so I hesitate to be prescriptive. I do, however, feel pretty confident that a 20-ounce Mountain Dew for breakfast is a bad idea for long-term health. And I'm equally confident that I don't want to share the sidewalk with a texting skateboarder.
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