This is not a piece about how smartphones are awful nor is it about how I dislike millennials for our smartphone use. This is about how much social settings and experiences have been altered because of how widespread smartphones have become. Because smartphones have become so widely used, interpersonal relationships have suffered greatly. Communication is implied but not actually carried out. Conversations occur while everyone involved is looking at a screen. In short, we don’t know how to talk to each other.
It’s so noticeable that it becomes almost sickening. A trip to any shopping mall will prove this as you can glace upon a table in the food court and see a group of five people seated together but not saying a word to each other. They may chuckle and show the rest something funny, but there’s no conversation between them. I’d hate to quote our parents but we need to get of of our phones and do something.How often have we been in an awkward situation, even a mildly awkward one, and pull out our phone in order to escape the moment? Phones have become a shield to avoid moments we’d rather not experience.
But as much as it is a shield, phones have also become a sword in the world of privacy. At one time, even just a few years ago, a person’s life would be mostly private when you first meet them. Outside of stories or anecdotes they’d tell you, most of their life is completely closed off. But these days all you need is five minutes and the person’s last name and their entire past and present is available to you. Nothing is private anymore. Secrets can’t be kept, mistakes can’t be hidden and anything you do will leave a digital paper trail that can be followed in a matter of seconds.
I’m not saying that we need to all go off the grid and disregard the phones we all have. Smartphones have become a very large fixture in daily life but it shouldn’t become the center of daily life. Phones are tools meant to be extensions of our ability to share information, communicate and interact with each other. They shouldn’t be our only means to communicate with each other. Next time you hang out with your friends, eating dinner with your family or actually having a conversation with someone either turn the phone off or put it on silent. Most of the time you can answer the text or call the person back or go like that instagram post later. Put the phone down and look at what’s going on in front of you.
A jack-of-all-trades that’s trying to master one.
Physics major at the University of Albany.
View all articles by Bobby Ali
