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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nLately I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve encountered a surprising number of people in public who \nseemed to be talking to themselves. Often when this happens, I assume \nthese folks are talking to me, so I respond in some way as polite custom\n dictates, only to be ignored\u00e2\u20ac\u201cor to receive a disapproving glance for \nhaving invaded someone\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s privacy bubble. Usually by this point I would \nrealize the person was talking on a cell phone or similar electronic \ndevice, and I would feel like a fool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I first apprehended the potentially adverse social consequences of \npersonal electronic devices in, appropriately, 1984. I was attending \nHumboldt State University, and I noticed a classmate wearing Walkman \nheadphones day after day and commented in class that he seemed to be \nusing them to tune the rest of us out. For me this was the beginning of \nwhat I now see as a deleterious trend that is getting so much worse than\n I initially anticipated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the 1990s I boarded a train in Taiwan and got a preview of the \ncell phone madness that would soon afflict the States. Bizarre sounds \nbegan to erupt all over the car\u00e2\u20ac\u201dringing, buzzing, beeping, Beethoven. \nThese noises would happen, and there would be several people engaging in\n solo conversation, often in loud and sometimes angry voices. \nAcknowledging cultural relativity, I unsuccessfully resisted the feeling\n that imposing one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s personal conversation on others is a bit churlish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Within a year after my return from Taiwan, these gadgets began \nshowing up in California, and soon they were everywhere. I started \nteaching at a high school near Sacramento in 1999, and back then school \nofficials still fantasized that they could control cell phone use. The \nadministration at the school where I taught prohibited students from \nhaving their phones out and would confiscate them. On this particular \ncampus cell phones had been used by gang members to stir up blue\/red \nrivalries and organize brawls (as do other demographics). It was a \nsensitive issue. Parents at this school and all over the state \ncomplained, however, demanding convenient contact with their kids, so \nschools eventually caved, and now the devices\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 presence on campuses is \nubiquitous. The damage to students\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 educations is already apparent. In \nmy last ten years of teaching I have seen students\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 attention spans \nsteadily decline as their interest, presence and focus are increasingly \nlured from the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153real\u00e2\u20ac\u009d world of physical human interaction to the strange\n new dimension called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cyberspace\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The problem is not only evident on high school campuses. I was \nteaching classes of primarily first-year international students on the \nU.C. Davis campus, and the problem there seemed worse. I passed a bus \nenclosure near the campus one day and saw five people, presumably \nstudents, all perched like birds on a wire, uniformly staring at a fixed\n point near their knees as they cradled their cherished screens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The influence of these devices is showing up in formal essays too. \nCollege students are now unthinkingly inserting texting shorthand into \ntheir academic papers. A student, for example, might quote G.K. \nChesterton writing, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I would maintain that thx are the highest form of \nthought.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d When I asked students to explain, they invariably said they \nhad done it unconsciously. I believed them. This isolated example may \nseem trivial, but it points to a larger pattern of communication decay. \nCommunications are increasingly characterized by textual \n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153soundbites\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00e2\u20ac\u201dfragments of ideas rather than more developed ones. \nUnfortunately, when one reads and writes in fragments and is exposed to \nfragmented images and messages in advertising through whatever medium, \none also tends to think (or suspend thinking) in like manner. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \ncontrary to the academic notion that one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s cognitive abilities can be \ndeveloped, resulting in improved comprehension and communication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Again I think of George Orwell, who imagined that Big Brother<\/em>\n would impose the means of intrusive thought monitoring and control. He \nwould be amazed to know that people would stand in long lines \nvoluntarily in the freezing rain to buy such equipment at high prices, \nproviding at their own expense the means of their own surveillance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I would like parents to understand that teachers now are competing \nfor students\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 attention with electronic devices to which your kids are \naddicted. If \u00e2\u20ac\u0153addicted\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is too raw, substitute \u00e2\u20ac\u0153compulsively \nhabituated\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. Only recently I saw an article on MSN called, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Are you addicted to your Smartphone<\/a>?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d,\n and the answer was pretty clear. If parents can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t recognize what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \nhappening, perhaps the inability stems from their own habitual reliance \non the same devices, and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153addiction\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153compulsion\u00e2\u20ac\u009d really are \nappropriate terms. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen many students deprived of their devices by \nschool officials, often eliciting reactions of agitation and panic. \nResponses are little different for adults, and a recently minted term \nexpresses this pathological condition: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153nomophobia,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which indicates a \nfear of being without a mobile device, or beyond mobile phone contact. \nIt\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s already affecting your families. Experts are arguing back and forth\n now about the existence or extent of device addictions, compulsive \nbehaviors and related pathologies, but the observations I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m reporting, \nanecdotally, suggest that such addiction\/compulsion is real and \npervasive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sufficiently convinced by my observations to have acted on them. I\n had a cell phone for a short time in the 1990s when I was covering the \nCalifornia capitol, but it didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t work very well. I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t hear \nadequately to report outdoor rallies or protests to the news anchors, so\n I got rid of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thereafter I saw companies continually rolling out product after \nproduct that the public swarmed to buy, and I realized that trying to \nkeep up with the latest technology in terms of consumerism is a fool\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \ngame, so I resolved to quit playing it. Most of these devices are just \ntoys really\u00e2\u20ac\u201ccomforting diversions and distractions if we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re honest with \nourselves. I acknowledge that some of these devices have utilitarian \nvalue, but that value is overrated, and considering the obsessive and \nunhealthy manner in which people generally are using these technologies,\n I suspect that their adverse effects far exceed the benefits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We have only begun to learn about these devices\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 ill effects on personal and public health along with a range of cognitive and social consequences. Change is not necessarily progress. We don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t need to accept every new technological fad that comes along, and the ones we do accept, we should approach with prudence and caution as we would any habituating influence. At the more extreme end of the spectrum, some people are becoming so enchanted with electronic gizmos that they are killing themselves (and others). The dangers and results of texting while driving are well known, but there are stranger cases of people dying after walking off of cliffs<\/a> and into traffic<\/a> while preoccupied with the objects of their obsession.<\/p>\n\n\n\n