Some of you will have already read this article from The
Atlantic. Written by an unbeliever and full of worldly and thus flawed wisdom
it is nevertheless worthwhile.
As with most topics, an honest assessment is complicated.
There are a host of good and bad implications from the present cultural trends.
Though it must be said that most of them are bad and some of the recovered
'innocence' of youth is a bit misleading. While teens are perhaps not as wild
as they were in previous generations the motives behind their tamed and
dependent domesticity are not quite virtuous either.
Mainly the article is something to read and think about. The
Smartphone revolution has come on so fast and has so thoroughly changed our
society that it's really difficult to fully take in. After the first decade,
which is not quite accurate as the phones did not become ubiquitous for several
years... we can only now begin to reflect.
As is often the case the sounds of warning and alarm fall on
deaf ears and come too late. By the time most people realise this technology
may be problematic, it's already become part of the mainstream. One is reminded
of the alarm in the late 1970s and early 1980s with regard to television. It
had taken over and transformed society and only then people began to say...
wait a minute. Is this a good idea?
It was too late.
And now we're undergoing a new transformation and one far
more profound. It's already too late.
I turned off television in 1995. With the advent of
high-speed internet which we did not get until 2008, some viewing has crept
back into our home. Previous to that we had a television and VCR which we kept
in a closet and would get out to watch the occasional movie.
At some point, maybe 2012, we purchased a Roku which allowed
us to stream to a television. While it's nice to watch the news it has also
opened the door to other television viewing. We watch some movies and generally
speaking some older television shows from the 1970s and 1980s. And yet I regret
how much television (even in its modified and mostly ad-free form) has crept
back into our home.
My point is, even for someone like me who is resistant to
cultural trends, who tries to think through these things and live out my
principles, it's so easy to compromise. These things find their way of creeping
back in.
As readers will know I have resisted the smartphone with
considerable energy and zeal. I refuse to own one. In fact if I could do-over
my past arrangements I would probably turn off the Internet and instead rely on
taking a laptop to a wi-fi spot a few times a week to check email, view the
news and take care of some downloads and uploads. I think that model will
probably be my course in the not too distant future. I hope so anyway.
I've had mixed feelings about the computer in our home. I
have one teenager who's (generally speaking) not that interested in it and I've
had to put some pressure on him to learn some things. I think at this point
some basic skills are requisite to function within society though I am also in
despair as increasingly I refuse to go along with the trends. I will not for
example talk to computers on customer service lines. It takes me longer to
press 'zero' several times and fight the system even while it then sends me to
the wrong department. Not having a smartphone is even now starting to bite a
little. I'm beginning to feel the first inklings of isolation in not having
one. I foresee a day in the not too distant future in which not having one is going
to make the practicalities of daily life somewhat difficult. I am willing to
embrace the challenge as I continue to refuse to own one. I quite literally
hate them and all touch-screen devices. My loathing of Steve Jobs and figures
like Zuckerberg and Musk are well known. I literally think these are evil
people that have helped to destroy society and denigrate human life and
existence. Their technological 'advances' have taken tools and turned them into
slavish toys.
But I'm a curmudgeon and I realise virtually no one is going
to follow my Neo-Luddite path. So be it, but you nevertheless must reckon with
the issues put forward in the article. Like it or not the so-called smartphone
is changing society and even now there's a generation growing up that will not
know what it's like to live without one.
That's something to think about.
How will you let it shape and affect your life? If you're old
enough to remember life before the Cellphone Revolution, have you reflected on
what it has done to society? Some aspects of the mobile phone are (I admit)
good and helpful. I can (sometimes) appreciate carrying a phone, a burner
flip-phone in my case. Other times I virtually curse the thing and am tempted
to dispose of it.
But the modern smartphone is not really a phone anymore is
it? Of course the advent of the Smartphone goes hand-in-hand with social media
and a lot of other Internet innovations. That's really part of the equation...
and the problem. Of course texting (another thing I on principle refuse to do)
is also changing the nature of communication and that antedates the 'smartphone'.
Have you reflected on your own use? Your time? How you
communicate? Has it changed your values? Your sense of 'friendship' and are you
affected by the misrepresented 'reality' of social media? Does it shape your
attitude in how the news is presented, in how people present their lives and
personalities? Are you troubled by the narcissism? Are you trying to do
something about it? Sometimes I wonder if people under say...25, are even able
to grasp this?
For those of you with young children or looking to marry and
have them, how will you manage this in your home?
My own children have not had phones of any kind and I'm
thankful for that. My oldest who is now working but living at home now has one (a
burner smartphone), but it's interesting. He's not that attached to it. It's
never been part of his life before. That may change but I hope I've taught him
something.
At the very least he knows not to send me a text. Some
parents I know would be horrified by this as they view the technology as a
lifeline at the very heart of their relationship with their child. But I also
have observed repeatedly that the text-tether has kept many of these adult
children from growing up and learning to navigate life. At 25, they're still
texting mom for help with daily decisions... things that we had to figure out
on our own at a much younger age.
I think this is axiomatic but I will state it anyway.
Technology can be a 'blessing' but if you use it blindly it will always be transformed into a curse.
Additionally, and this statement would demand an essay all its own, the Church and its leadership have utterly failed to address this issue. There have been some criticisms but for the most part there has been capitulation and even endorsement.
I totally sympathize with your sentiments about the smartphone. I had one for a little while, but I got rid of it for character reasons. It's easy to drift off into the phone when you're in situation where you have to wait, or when the desire to look something up occurs. I found it affecting my memory, my patience, my ability to be aware of my surroundings. I also dislike the medium for texting for anything remotely substantial. I do like it as a kind of portable telegraph machine, able to send quick updates, ask and respond to one word questions, etc. But nothing replaces face-to-face conversation. Perhaps both the increasing fragmentation in national political life as well as the explosion of social ineptitude both spawn from increasing dependence on impersonal media which give the illusion of personality.
ReplyDeleteI think you're too negative at times, you are certainly far more sane and helpful than most people's uncritical acceptance of all things and brainless capitulation. Musk and Silicon Valley people are evil, it seems they want to change mankind into some sort of race of cyborgs. They're like the 21st century version of Victorian spiritualists and occultists.
Me negative! (smile)
DeleteI harp on the phones but I now that almost everyone reading has one. I'm maybe engaging in a little hyperbole but for the most part I'm just alarmed and I hope God fearing wisdom seeking people will sit up and take stock.
We're coming into a time in which I think we're going to have to start being extreme.... I mean extreme in the sense of weird, world-rejecting... our thoughts and actions are going to seem really bizarre to the world. They're going to think it strange that we don't run to the same excess of riot, that sort of thing. Lot in Sodom, vexed but delivered.
Funny addendum to phone stories.... when you don't have them you really stick out in waiting rooms and restaurants. Especially when you're a family and you've got multiple teenagers. People stare and wonder. It's kind of funny. I hope at some point it will translate into an opportunity to bear witness. In the waiting rooms we read books... that alone gets attention... teenagers reading books? The office people will start getting co-workers to come and see. It actually happened.
In the restaurant we do this really weird thing... we talk and look each other in the eye.
Ah, life was so much better before all this stuff. I am so glad that I didn't grow up with the Internet and though the PC was around barely anyone had them and back then they couldn't do all that much anyway. Video games were at the arcade or at best an Atari. You could waste some time with the thing but they were arcade style games, they weren't so absorbing and they were hooked up to your tv, so you'd turn it off after awhile. Besides later you had to watch MASH or Columbo or something (smile)
We'd play outside, you had real friends.... ah well, everyone's heard it all before but it's sad that so few kids are growing up that way. It wasn't ideal either, not by a long shot. I wasted too much time watching tv when I was a kid and a lot of it was junk. Hogan's Heroes reruns were funny, but c'mon it was a waste of time.
But as flawed as it was, things are much worse today. Maybe at least we in the Church can do something different. I've tried with my kids. I wouldn't do everything the same. I'd loosen up on some things and be stricter on others. It's hard but if you're not even thinking it through you're bound to fail.
I know what you means. I'm staring out over all these hunched over faces, mesmerized by the lights of the little box. I feel like it's The Matrix, that scene when Neo stares out over all the pods after becoming unplugged. It's strange.
DeleteIt's the same in the UK. At my last (Christian) workplace people my age (born 1990 or later) would often have their phones out at the lunch table and drift into the ether now and then. Part of me wanted to take a hammer and smash the devices up... in love, of course.
ReplyDeleteIt's part of the reason to homeschool, I feel. Primary school kids (5-11) are literally looking up pornography on these things. You can warn your kids all you want, but anyone could just shove something in front of their face 'for a laugh'. My Mum (Mom!) is a classroom assistant and she's seen it all utterly transform the 'iGen', opening up a whole world of bullying and tiresome parent/child/teacher struggles with who said what about who on Facebook, etc.
p.s. And I should say I agree the church hasn't thought about it at all. I've seen the effects on Christian families from the sad (disconnection, inability to concentrate, etc.) to the absolutely hair-raising (the most astonishing unholiness slipping under the net). Could there be a more effective way for Satan to bypass the previously firm walls of the family?
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