STOP ACTING SMART, YOU PHONEY

SMARTPHONES ARE DUMBING US DOWN — AND LEFT TO OUR OWN DEVICES, THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN

Icall my smartphone smartypants. I don’t even have a particularly smart phone — not, at least, according to conventional wisdom circa 2016; I have a Black Berry, which is work-friendly, not app-friendly. So I don’t have an Insta Beauty feature that can take away years from my face at the click of a button or a robust Google Maps that can guide me through the maze of a lost kingdom. But it’s smart enough to alert me to Facebook notifications — I now remember friends’ birthdays and wedding anniversaries thanks to my phone — and it sends me reminders about meetings I might have otherwise missed. I don’t need to jog my memory no more.

I can also Google words that I’ve forgotten. The other day, at a news meeting, someone mentioned “fog index”. I swear I’ve heard the term before, but suddenly its meaning seemed really foggy. Not to worry, I slyly opened Google on my phone, and there it was — the fog lifted!

Life seems to have become easier, so why do I find it all so disturbing?

Because I think my smartphone smugness unleashes a steady stream of inertia. I feel complacent, I don’t try hard enough, help is at hand — 24x7. I’ve become dumb (okay, dumber). There are people Whats Apping me in the dead of the night, forwarding inane jokes and memes, putting paid to all notions of a restful night — and I am being rendered hyperactive enough to read them at all odd hours. Worse, there are fake capsules being passed off as breaking news (including pleas for help for kids who need blood transfusions, alerts on abused puppies up for adoption and so on).

As the debate raged on in 2016 — are smartphones (or technology) dumbing us down? — we caught up with some tech-savvy folks and got to the heart of the matter.

“Working on a smartphone has significantly reduced my ability to work on a single activity,” feels Dubai resident Arijit Sen. “I find it difficult to read more than three pages at one go without getting diverted to some other activity.” And “conversations, unless extremely thoughtprovoking, tend to be very short”.

Another Dubai denizen Shaheen Irani Hrib points out something that should bother all of us manning media organisations: “Our attention spans are getting shorter, our minds are getting lazier and we want to be spoon-fed the ‘dummy’s version of the news’” — on ‘mobile’ news feeds. Not just that. Since smartphones are so intrinsically linked to the Internet, “people will believe ANYTHING [that they come across on their mobiles]… Think about what’s being said logically. Take a second to verify things. Use your smartphone for good, not stupidity.”

For their daughter, Shaheen and her husband have installed “child safety measures but you can never trust these entirely. We constantly worry about this and repeatedly remind her to come get us if someone tries to get in touch or something grown-up comes up.” Arijit says if he’s at a party, he keeps his phone aside and checks for messages/emails only at certain intervals. “During dinners in small groups, I usually keep the device face down and sneak a peek between courses, or when the others break the connect to check their own devices… unless, of course, the company is dreadful!”

A University of Waterloo survey looked into smartphone habits, and its findings suggested that since we now primarily use phones to solve problems (locating a venue, Photoshopping a pimple, organising our lives etc), we lose the magic touch ourselves, gradually becoming more inept in everything we do. Nathaniel Barr, one of the lead authors of the paper and a postdoctoral researcher at the university, has been quoted as saying, “Decades of research has revealed that humans are eager to avoid expending effort when problem-solving and it seems likely that people will increasingly use their smartphones as an extended mind.”

Interesting, and right up my alley. But let’s hear out Clare Geeves, stylist and fashion/lifestyle PR for White Label, who describes herself as “never seen without my iPhone in hand,” and who firmly believes “my phone is there to make my life easier.” “A few weeks ago, I was at a pub quiz and we couldn’t work out how to spell a simple word and I said ‘Where’s the spellcheck?’” she laughs. “I agree to a degree [that we’ve forgotten how to spell], but I also think, sometimes, it’s just us being lazy!”

Shaheen calls herself “dyslexic,” so she’s grateful for all the help she gets from her smartphone. “I use spellcheck and a dictionary more than Google.”

“Author, traveller, speaker, and mentor” Konstantina Sakellariou feels that, “People have forgotten how to spell correctly mainly because education does not focus on the importance of learning the roots of each word. It is an educational problem, not a technology problem.”

Even though Konstantina says, “I do not pay any attention to viral news… it has ended up being mostly about entertainment (of a rather bad taste) instead of information — I do not even pay attention to viral wishes!” She’s “grateful for the thinking my mobile might be doing for me, because it allows me time to focus on much more important things… The more AI (Artificial Intelligence) develops, the more I develop myself.” (Read the box out on Black Mirror, girl!)

In one of the issues of the San Francisco Medicine journal, I came across this gem: “A cell phone is a two-way microwave radio with intermittent and destabilising pulses, unlike microwave ovens that steadily operate at the same frequencies at much greater power. The weak and erratic microwave radiation from cell phones and tablets cannot directly break the bonds that hold molecules together, but it does disrupt DNA, weaken the brain’s protective barrier, and release highly reactive and damaging free radicals.”

There you go. Smartphones are weakening our brainpower. Whether we accept it or choose to live in denial, we are getting dumbed down.

People will believe

anything if it’s online. Think about what’s being said logically. Take a second to verify things. Use your smartphone for good, not stupidity. Shaheen Irani Hrib

Working on a smartphone has significantly reduced my ability to work on a single activity. I find it difficult to read more than three pages in one go without diverting to some other activity. Arijit Sen

Personally, I do not pay any attention to viral news… It has ended up being mostly about entertainment (of a rather bad taste) instead of information. I do not even pay attention to viral wishes. Konstantina Sakellariou

A few weeks ago, I was at a pub quiz and we couldn’t work out how to spell a simple word and I said, ‘Where’s the spellcheck?’ I agree to a degree but I also think, sometimes, it’s just us being lazy! Clare Geeves