Smartphones Side Effects
Stroll down the street of virtually any major city and you’ll likely see folks gazing intently at their smartphones, as if they were under a collective spell in a fairy tale. Makes you wonder about the side effects of one the great inventions of our time. I’m Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.
Misra: What is happening elsewhere? What are my friends doing? Whats the latest news? And we want to be in the know all the time. But being in the know becomes — you have no sensory experience of what is going around you right now.
Shalini Misra is an assistant professor of Public and International Affairs at Virginia Tech.
Misra: I dont see our society tossing their cellphones out of the windows , but we are going to increasingly question the consequences of these technologies in our lives. We are going to think about them think about how we behave when these technologies come into our lives, when we become increasingly dependent on them.
I have a lot of hope in the ability of people to question and critique the consequences of the tools they bring into their lives.
We have the potential to build these virtual communities and exchange this level of empathy that we never had before, to get this information from a wide variety of sources, from people who are really experiencing the current situation, and exchange empathy with them. But we must always ask, you know, are we doing it at a certain cost with people who are next to us, and are we doing it at a cost of being in a constant state of distraction and exhaution almost?
I know of families who practice what they call a cellphone Sabbath no cellphones, no technology, no computers Friday evening onwards. Sit back, relax, and be in the moment for at least two days before they are back to the grind. I also see people taking control over the choices they make for their children, in terms of how much time to spend on tablets and cellphone devices.
I’m Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.