Is my phone my life?
The other day, I saw a social media post by the ministry of internal affairs in Romania targeted at teenagers participating to music festivals for the first time. Since the festival season is in full swing, it made sense, and immediately took me back to my own teen days of riding the train with friends for the first time to follow our favorite artists.
It was a well-thought-out post, offering good insights and suggestions for the most part, though one thing caught my attention. The first "tip" offered was that your phone equals your life (lifeline, presumably, but thus translated). So, you know, keep it charged, keep mobile data on, text your parents, etc. All good practical advice, though it got me wondering to what extent that is true, both for teenagers and for us grown-ups.
Many of us have this attitude, especially while traveling - my phone is my lifeline. Many people become quite anxious when their phone loses signal or their battery dies while in a different city, or even worse, a foreign country.
We've grown extremely dependent on navigation systems and online arranging of everything from flights to accomodations to tickets to attractions, even to translating ourselves where good old English fails.
Inevitably, I get the feeling something is being lost.
I think of my mother's accounts of traveling through Europe as a young woman in the 90s. And somehow managing. I think of my aunt getting lost in a foreign city with small children in tow and no way of contacting the group she was with. And yet, managing.
Because in the end, that's what we do. We manage, and certainly that's a lesson we want to be imparting to younger generations. While (obviously) it's important to drive the point home for teens at a music festival - that you need to be safe - it's also worth reminding them they're smart, strong, capable and generally well-equipped to find a way.
You don't want to be raising children that don't believe that, and who panic when the phone dies.
Obviously, I'm aware plenty of people traveled way before mobile phones and smartphones particularly were "a thing" and were fine, but that's not really my point here. I'm not trying to enlighten you that you can actually survive without a phone, rather it's a point of view. An attitude. I didn't live it, but I imagine people my mum's and aunt's age, during that time, had a feeling of "yeah I'll fucking survive because people do". It didn't seem odd to be self-reliant, it was expected.
I just worry it's becoming diminished. That young people are growing up to rely increasingly on a small army of tech devices that, marvelous as they are, are robbing those less trained, less determined, less something, of a sense of autonomy crucial if we are to survive together.
A friend shared an article with me recently talking about the alarming development of technology that concluded, I thought, very aptly,
"The future didn't need more technology. It needed more meaning."
And we are beginning to scramble for it. A future of dependent, pliable, self-doubting people surrounded by machines they neither control nor understand does not sound appealing to me, and perhaps, if we had more sense, we would consider much more carefully how we instruct our children to survive in a world so strange I very much doubt we even fathom it yet.
Ulitmately, survival will belong to the ones who remember not to mistake tools for wise advisors, leaders, and roadside companions.
Oh, this this post! I recently watched a rather lengthy YouTube video where a guy who lived in the US locked ALL his electronic devices in a time delay lock, except his laptop.
He reconnected a land line phone, and if he wanted to go somewhere, he would look up the directions at home, and WRITE them down in a notebook, eg: catch x bus from street y, go to the stop opposite the thing, walk another two blocks, turn left, etc.
He constantly commented on how much it connected him with the people around him. He purchased a dedicated camera to take pictures with friends. He did that. He gave them prints. And there was this overwhelming sense of joy, watching this man film his life, without a phone, for a week, or month, or however long it was, rediscovering HUMAN FUCKING INTERACTION. (not in the copulating sense!)
And wow, do people not ever have any situational awareness at all when they wander about. No one has a conversation with a stranger in the store.
I am struggling enough at my new gym, where everyone seems to not have headphones or earphones in, and have chats and encourage each other between sets (even if they're working on equipment across the other side of the gym).
Is it so strange to live in a community? To be a part of a culture of humanity? To constantly complain about disconnection online when we can literally not be NPCs in real life, and ask the cashier at the shops about the last time they cried?
I am trying to be that person people remember. Not to the point of complete chaos, but because, I see them. They see me. But I don't see a hand holding a phone. I see a human who has stories to tell me. Who are worried about something. Who have their dreams.
Who knows, maybe I can help them achieve their dream, or maybe they me. You never know unless you don't act, and phones take away our agency and our ability to act. having said that... when I'm walking to my gym, you best believe I'm blastin' some sort of music.. from my phone, into my ears.
They don't listen to music while working out? What weirdos!.
I'm glad to see this trend, increasingly, too. More and more people, particularly young people, are going analogue which is nice to hear. I think we're scared, honestly, a bit. Of human interaction (which is insane, but there it is). so we hide inside our phones and hope nobody thinks we're weird even though that's what we should be hoping for in the first place.
We were too. I hid behind a book.
To be fair, when all people do is listen to murder-mystery podcasts, scroll a feed of despair, violence and "news", isolationism is probably worse than what it was when people were glued to their CRT tvs.
It is there now, in their hand, every moment of every day.
But gee, listen to me, I'm just shaking my fist at a cloud, fundamentally.
I totally agree with ur post, the reason why most of us worry when our phone battery run down , it mainly for the worries it creates for our love ones, in my country the electricity is not always constant, but most people have power Bank to back up their phones. Then ur phone is you because it hold always everything you need , your phone is your bank, family numbers are all there , basically just like you said it does always everything..thanks for sharing @honeydue
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STOPSometimes I think it's just we allow these things into our lives that think FOR us and fill the void. We can't navigate because we haven't practiced that skill. Goodness these days I wouldn't have a clue how to research, book, execute a trip without my phone yet in 2001 I travelled Europe, UK and Asia with a 4 year old with no phone. I mean we had internet cafes I suppose. The internet was a place you entered and left through a physical door and paid per 15 minute block. It was a tool, not an extension of self.
Jamie will put Google maps on for the easiest of trips. I'd rather use my gut and street smarts because you pay more attention and gain more, not least the ability to do it again.
Bring on the techocalypse. I'm ready. But I'm Gen X - we had these resources before the internet got here. Feel free to be on my team.
Help, I got a papercut from my map, and my wrist doesn't have the strength to turn a key in the ignition, and oh, what's that third pedal on the floor of the car.... and what do you mean the eggs don't need to go in the fridge... and ...
HOW DO PEOPLE KNOW STUFF!!!!!
I'll be on your team. Gladly! It's important to hold on to those street smarts. I've seen plenty of Gen X-ers willingly throwing their wisdom away as though it were something they'd been dying to get rid of when technology came to relieve them. Don't seem clever to me.
When I look back to the time before cell phones, I wonder how we managed. But we did!
We used map books when travelling, looked at the road signs, and asked for directions at the nearest shop or petrol station if we got lost. We relied on ourselves and strangers along the way. So sad that those things are lost!
Fast forward to today - I do get anxious about losing my phone, it not having connectivity, the kids panic if I don't answer my phone immediately, and vice versa.
At times, it can become an intrusion on my privacy.
What the future holds, no one can predict, but one thing's for sure, we're so dependent on technology that I would be very afraid of this world if the internet crashes, as unlikely as it is, but what if!
Much food for thought here @honeydue!
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This is actually what I'm trying to do with Hive currently.
We have the advantage of being an unbreakable ledger; one that speaks great truths to a machine that feeds on fear and hate and division -- but we all use it for shit posts.
I'm going to change that. Starting with The Flame.
Interestingly crypto's biggest mistake was forgetting to infuse soul.
As for phones?
Yes, I actually don't take mine out with me.
Weird as it seems but I stopped doing that when I was made redundant from my last job and on the first Monday unemployed Google maps told me I was late for work and did I want it to find me any alternate quicker routes?
I neither told it I worked, where I worked, and on which times I worked.
But there it was, charting my exact route to work, and knowing I was late.
After that my phone stays at home lol.
I since then have learned that phones are so precise that it can tell which shops you go into and it can serve you advertisements based on predictions of which items you've looked at.
I rarely take my phone out now. The less it knows about me the better!