Given the average age of the audience at Bob Dylan’s concert last Monday night in Dublin’s 3Arena, most of us are certainly used to going to concerts without cell phones. Yet I still feel like I’m missing a limb when it’s gone.
ob Dylan banned phones and photography at his concerts. At a certain age, he is irritable. A few years ago in Vienna, he told an audience: “Take a photo or don’t take a photo. We can play or pose, OK? ” He played another song, but then walked away when the phone use continued.
Dylan has moved on from just begging his fans. He now has a system where, when you arrive at the venue, you put your phone in a bag and then lock it. You keep your bag, but you can’t access your phone until you leave the venue. Have someone unlock it and you are on your way. It all works pretty seamlessly.
But the benefits aren’t just for old, cranky rock stars. In the bar before the show everyone was talking to each other, no one was staring at their phones.
After the show, I ended up talking to another guy. We chatted for a few minutes about the concert. If either of us had phones, we would definitely stare at them.
This isn’t the beginning of a lifelong friendship, but certainly some lifelong friendships were missed because one or the other was staring at the phone.
The popularity of smartphones over the past 10 years has had a significant negative impact on society. Many public spaces – buses, bars, cafes – where people, especially Irish, used to engage in conversation are now silent except for whatever Muzak is put on or the occasional shout excited shouts from TikTok.
Smartphones are a digital domain that does not include other domains. I’m sure that makes a lot of people more comfortable when they don’t have to socialize with other people. But are we aware of its impact on society and what is being lost?
I see people going out to dinner looking at their phones rather than talking to each other. Pictures of Queen Elizabeth’s funeral a few months ago as the coffin was passing show most people looking at it through their phones. It’s as if people stopped living, and started recording their lives instead.
I am getting old. Not nearly as old as Dylan, but probably just as tough. The source of about two-thirds of the arguments in my house is cell phone use (the rest has to do with fake tans and the length of showers).
My kids will sleep with their phones if it’s allowed. As I’m writing this, I’m watching – with mixed admiration and anger – one of my kids refilling the kettle, making toast and a cup of tea, all without taking their eyes off the phone. .
TikTok is currently the app where kids spend the most time. It offers drippy short videos that provide a kind of entertainment completely devoid of anything useful. Watch a teen use TikTok and you’ll see them flip through hundreds of short videos in one sitting.
They can get past that many people because it looks like people will swipe to the next page within seconds if that doesn’t get their attention.
Study bells with my observations. A Microsoft study from last year found that people will switch their attention to something else within eight seconds if a message doesn’t engage them. We are becoming goldfish.
And this is in adults. Imagine the effect on teenagers whose brains are not fully formed.
Smartphones are considered great tools for enhancing creativity and of course they provide educational tools. But more than likely they prevent the child from concentrating.
However, software and hardware companies have succeeded in infiltrating our schools with the active encouragement of the Department of Education.
Sure, smartphones are great and many parents will say they enhance the safety of their kids. Saving time we can bank online, check email away from the office, listen to podcasts, read the news and book flights on our phones. But they also get all of our attention.
It’s hard to know what any country can do to stop smartphones and other devices – it may be beyond that country’s control. But it is also beyond the control of individual parents.
When all of the child’s peers have phones, it becomes impossible without a phone. At least one government can block these people from entering schools, preventing more screen use.
I miss the ethical concerns about video games and television. Remember we had to write essays about how TV will ruin the art of conversation? That didn’t really happen. And maybe a few generations ago there were parents who yelled at their children to put down their books.
Would you believe me if I said this was no ordinary moral panic – that this time it was different?
https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/answer-to-disharmonious-relationship-with-phones-is-blowing-in-the-wind-42139781.html The answer to the discordant relationship with the phone is blowing in the wind
