LOST IN A CELLPHONE WORLD

They are everywhere in almost everyone’s hands in almost every place we are: in church, at the opera, in class, at work, at play, in bed, at the dinner table. Everywhere. We have become addicted to them almost as if we were addicted to any drug, sometimes even worse. We are cellphone addicts whether we admit it or not.

Some of our local school boards are debating whether or not to delay the starting of school because too many students are not getting enough sleep. They’re not getting enough sleep because they are staying up into the middle of the night all too often on their cellphones chatting about nothing that is of any consequence whatsoever. If their parents would talk the phone off of them when it was bedtime, I dare say they would go into DTs. The addiction is so profound.

Teenagers are not the only ones so addicted. Go into any restaurant and note that the art of conversation has come and gone. Everyone, it seems, is on the phone. Instead of actually having a real vocal conversation, they are typing words that cannot truly convey real meaning. In my past life when I was actively seeking a position, I used to have phone interviews with search committees. I hated them even if I knew they were doing the best they could with limited financial resources. Real conversation comes with body language which phones, cell or otherwise, cannot convey.

And as much as I would like to think that we older people, retired and all, are exempt from this addiction, we are not. My phone goes with me wherever I go and I feel naked if I don’t have it with me. That is true even though I know none of the emails I receive is a life-and-death message. Nor are any of the phone calls. The caller can always leave a voice mail. Hardly any ever do and when they do, it is usually an appointment reminder that I already have in my calendar – on my phone, of course.

I could rant on even if I am not quite as guilty as many others. The guilt, however, is in degree not in kind. And it is not going to get better any time soon. We seem to be lost in this cellphone world and have little or no inclination to find a way out or even a need to do so. What has happened, I think, is that we have lost not only the art of conversation but the cellphone has fostered and even condoned some very, very uncivil words that we would have previously been loath to utter in public or in person.

It now seems to be okay to call names, spread lies, demean others because it is safe to do so on the phone. The reader can’t hit or hurt me except by demeaning me and my opinions in return. That should not be acceptable, but it seems to have become such. I wonder what would happen if we all, every one of us, would put away our cellphones for one week and have real conversations with one another. The DTs would be there, but we would all have them. I would have to use a paper calendar, which I did for many, many years and survived. But think what a wonderful world that would be. (I know: dream on.)