I'm surprised in this day and age that people keep repeating cliches as much as they do. One of my LEAST favorite cliches is that smart phones are making us dumber. Thirty years ago, none of us even had personal computers and now we all literally carry one around everywhere we go. There's more information at our fingertips than every before.
But you're thinking "that's not what people use phones for!", and you'd be right. At any given moment, there probably are a lot of people using their smart phones for just social media or games. So I guess what I object to is when someone says it makes ME dumber. Do you know why I'm reading my phone when I'm around you? Because you bore the piss out of me. You drone on and on about things that probably aren't true. And since I don't have to go grab a newspaper anymore, I can open up an app and read news from around the world. When you tell me that President Obama is really a citizen of Kenya, you know why I get on my phone? So I can take those nugget of bullshit and look it up. I mean, I'm not gonna tell you you're wrong because, hey, you saw it on ONE SITE the internet so it must be true. I'm on my phone because I literally don't care about what you're saying. So I'm reading. Checking the news. Looking to see how my team is doing. A long standing group text with my high school buddies. And yet, you keep interrupting me with drivel.
When people used to read magazines and novels, did prognosticators say that it was the end of modern civilization because people didn't talk to each other any more? When TV's began appearing in every living room, did they say that people don't socialize any more and we're all doomed? (Maybe they did, but they were wrong).
What I find ironic is that the very same people who are complaining about people being on their phones too much are the very same people WHO ARE ALWAYS ON THEIR OWN PHONE. Guess it's OK, then.
Next time you see someone on their phone around you in a social situation, I want you to consider the very real possibility that they may be on their phone because what they're looking at is much more interesting than you. That's right. You probably got bumped by Angry Birds or Kim Kardashian's twitter feed. Try being more interesting. At least more interesting than those two things.
