While nuclear energy, global warming, deforestation and Donald Trump continue to be major threats to the environment, mobile phones can rob us of our very humanity.
Students arrive for my lessons with their phones in their hands – despite signs on the doors clearly indicating that phones are forbidden in my classroom. The very concept of leaving the phone in a locker is horrifying to most students. They even have to reach out and touch their phones periodically just to be reassured that they’re still there. This is ADDICTION. No ifs, no buts. ADDICTION. Forgot to bring your books to school? We have reading lessons at the same time every week, and yet about six students in each class forget to bring books with them. The same six students would never dream of being without their phones. This is ADDICTION.
Walk around the school. You’ll see many students playing with their phones, but very few actually talking to each other and none at all reading books. This is a change that has occurred gradually over the last few years so that most never even noticed it.
Walk around the school. You’ll see many students playing with their phones, but very few actually talking to each other and none at all reading books. This is a change that has occurred gradually over the last few years so that most never even noticed it.
You may well think that this is a gross exaggeration – but if so, perhaps you haven’t observed the slow slide into a digital dystopia, a world of social exclusion where families stare mindlessly at their phones rather than talk to each other. Even dating couples are to be seen romantically gazing into each other’s eyes the screens on their mobile devices.
Paul Lewis, writing in The Guardian says that:
There is growing concern that as well as addicting users, technology is contributing toward so-called “continuous partial attention,” severely limiting people’s ability to focus and possibly lowering IQ.
There is growing concern that as well as addicting users, technology is contributing toward so-called “continuous partial attention,” severely limiting people’s ability to focus and possibly lowering IQ.
If this weren’t bad enough, serious scientific research (not funded by the industry) indicates that mobile phones can cause cancer and “may be exposing us to harmful levels of electromagnetic radiation.”
At parent teacher conferences, I am often asked, “how can my son/daughter raise his/her grades?” The answer is simple. But like the rich man who asks Jesus how he can enter heaven, you may not like the answer – Ditch the phone and open a book. Lewis goes on to note that many people within the mobile phone and computer business severely limit their own children’s access to digital technology:
It is revealing that many of these younger technologists are weaning themselves off their own products, sending their children to elite Silicon Valley schools where iPhones, iPads and even laptops are banned.
Is buying a mobile phone a form of self-destruction? Is buying a mobile phone for a child actually a form of child abuse? The very people who design these products think so.
