‘Selfie addicts’ wouldn’t last a week in the Army

Icompletely disagree with the British Army trying to attract ‘selfie addicts’ and ‘phone zombies’ in their latest advertising campaign (News, Issue 545, page 6). I appreciate that the Army always needs to recruit youngsters, and that may be harder than ever, but are things really so desperate that they need to appeal to self-obsessed narcissists?

As a recently retired teacher, I’ve seen how the rise of technology, and particularly phones, have created a generation of youngsters wholly unsuited to the demands of military service. These wretched devices took over the school I taught in. Walking down the corridor meant dodging phone zombies tapping at the screens without caring what was going on around them. We should do what the French have done, and ban phones in schools.

It’s absurd for the Army to claim that being a selfie addict means you have the “self-confidence” they’re looking for – it’s more likely that a selfie addiction is a sign of crippling insecurity or preening vanity. Similarly, phone zombies don’t have “focus”; they are cocooned in their tiny world, lacking curiosity for anything else.

By pandering to these antisocial habits, the Army is making them seem respectable - even desirable. A phoneobsessed teenager can now respond to his parents’ pleas that he puts down his device by saying, “Look, the army says I’m a self-confident, focused go-getter with a bright future”. The exact opposite is probably true. Don’t be surprised if the misleading message conveyed by the adverts attracts phone junkies who lack the self-discipline to last more than a week in service.

Howard Beale