Fighting off our unhealthy phone addiction
Our addiction to the smart phone is now costing lives. Parents are so busy looking at their phones that some don’t even notice that their kids are drowning.
Nearly 90 per cent of child drownings or near-drownings are the result of ‘‘inadequate adult supervision’’, according to the New Zealand Recreation Association. It says hand-held devices are the main culprits.
In this case, technological addiction can lead to tragedy. But there is a much wider problem.
Phones too often trap us in a sad kind of digital solipsism. The gadgets promised planetary communication to all via the internet.
The news media, of course, are part of this gigantic stream of information.
Yet too often our over-use of this miraculous technology has shrunken our world rather than expanded it. There is now a widening revolt against phone addiction and those who profit from it.
Some now call on Apple and other digital giants to take action against the addiction which they have fomented. This is odd, a bit like calling for the pushers to stop the addicts before they consume again. But perhaps it’s also a sign of how big the need has become.
One suggestion is that phones could be programmed to point out how much time users waste on it.
It’s like setting an app to stop you using your apps.
The obvious problem is that this seems to collide with the giants’ own commercial interests. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has promised to try to prevent people wasting their digital time. He would change Facebook’s news feed filters ‘‘to help you have more meaningful social interactions’’, he said.
We’ll see what this means in practice. In the meantime, scepticism seems best.
Technology writer Farhad Manjoo argues that Apple doesn’t need you to be an addict, but merely interested enough to buy the next upgraded version of its phone. In the meantime, it can send out useful reminders to you that you’re wasting too much time on your current phone.
Perhaps, people should be doing it for themselves, and telling themselves and their friends that there’s much more to life than following Twitter and swapping inanities via Instagram.
There is a developing etiquette about phones, for instance. We accept the warnings before concerts to switch off our phones. We can hardly object to a loud protest from someone we’ve bumped into on the street while looking at the screen.
But we need to do more. How about phone-free lunches with friends and phone-free family meals? These are small acts of rebellion, but they’re a good start.