Glassy-Eyed Zombies
What does technology have to offer that the real world doesn't?
By Kayla Pimentel
By Kayla Pimentel
I didn’t think we’d die this way. It’s not exactly death, but it’s pretty damn close. I dare you to walk to the nearest Starbucks or shopping mall and just look around. What do you see? Shopping bags? People? What about that lethal device in the palm of their hands? You won’t (I hope!) see guns or knives, but you will see something pervasive, something deadly, something that has turned what were once vibrant teens, adults, even wise old grandparents into glassy-eyed zombies—the cell phone.
“Really mom, can you get off your phone for two seconds?” I said those exact words to my mom a couple days ago. It drives me nuts how important that piece of metal is. “Okay okay, I’ll put it down,” she said as she put it down on the table. The phone screen looks up at me like a person- as if he knows he’s my mom’s other option when she finally gets bored of talking to me. Like a slap in the face, I stare at that phone in disgust. Things have gotten worse since she got the iPhone 6. I feel like I’m in a competition against someone whom I have no chance of winning. No matter what I say or do, the little block filled with endless numbers of people to talk to or articles to read will always win. When I pictured myself getting into an altercation with someone, I would’ve never guessed it would be with a cell phone. “The same technologies that can aid communication can be detrimental if children use them to zone out their family at supper,” (“How Young is too Young for a Cell Phone”). Only in my case, it’s not my child zoning out her parents, it’s my own mother zoning me out. I decided to take my hatred for cell phones outside of my immediate family. I wanted to see if other people were as obsessed with their phones as my mother. It didn’t take very long for me to see that cell phone use was just as bad. I guess a part of me was hoping that cell phones hadn’t completely taken over, but that hope was crushed just like my dreams of becoming a judge and sentencing everyone who abused animals to a life in prison were. I began to take a tally. I tallied every time I saw someone even merely glance at their phone. It only took me 30 minutes to get fed up and exhausted from tallying every couple of minutes. In total, I counted a whopping 19 tally marks out of about 15-20 people. To make matters worse, most of the tally marks were made by people who were accompanied by other people! What is it about cell phones that makes it far more interesting to talk to people through a screen rather than talking to people in real life? My observations didn’t stop there. I was attending a wedding the following day, so I decided to take my ventures to the wedding.
Saturday October 25, 2014 was my cousin Lorraine’s big day. The venue was romantic and elegant- it suited her quite nicely. Paper lanterns were hung around the patio of the garden and the smell of warm food drifted through the air. As I walked to my table I couldn’t help but stare at the 4 tiered cake covered with white frosting and purple flowers. Finally, I arrived at my table. I sat down to meet the gazes from my parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. “This wedding is beautiful,” I said with a smile. As I glanced around the room I found myself coming across the presence of cell phones. They weren’t cell phones being used to take photos, they were cell phones being used to text or check things like Instagram. One tally after the other. I found myself making tally marks faster than I could keep up. After exactly 41 minutes, I brought my observations to a halt. A staggering 37 tallies out of no more than 50 people- almost one tally every couple of minutes! I was left scatterbrained, wondering what was so much more important than being in the moment to celebrate someone dear to everyone who attended the wedding. What do cell phones have to offer that the real world doesn’t? After a variety of personal research and observations I began to see that social media was a big contribution. Megan Thompson, a college student from Chicago, admits to documenting her entire day on Snapchat every day of the week. 72 Snapchat tally marks on November 4th, 63 Snapchat tally marks on November 7th, 59 Snapchat tally marks on November 10th, 77 Snapchat tally marks on November 13th, and 60 Snapchat tally marks on November 17th. 19 tweets on November 3rd and 14 tweets on November 5th. All of these numbers and dates represent the number of snapchats taken or tweets tweeted during school hours based on my personal contacts when kids are supposed to be paying attention in class or collaborating with their classmates. No, these results aren’t based on every kid in San Diego, but it does say something about technology’s effect on people in the real world. Even when there are dozens of other kids right in front of them, they still turn to their cell phones. Cell phones and technology are deprivating to people of all ages. “Sixty percent of college students admit they may be addicted to their cell phone, even getting agitated when it is not in sight,” said James Roberts, Ph. D., who is the lead author of the article, “The Invisible Addiction: Cell Phone Activities and Addiction Among Male and Female College Students.” Female college students spend about 10 hours a day on their cell phones, while men college students spend nearly 8 hours per day, according to a Baylor University study on cell phone activity. For the first time, half of adults ages 65 and older are online according to the Pew Research Internet Project. Year after year the number of people spending a majority of their time behind an electronic screen increases, and so does the army of glassy-eyed zombies.
“Excuse me miss, I have a question… Do you prefer to talk to people face-to-face or would you rather communicate over social media or texting/calling?” I asked a lady at the Starbucks in the Fashion Valley Mall who was accompanied by a few of her friends. She looked up at me for a moment with eyes that looked unamused. “I prefer to talk to people close to me in person, but I prefer to talk to everyone else over the phone,” she said as her gaze returned to her cell phone. That comment opened the most atrocious door in my house of fears. I do not fear monsters, heights, or war; I fear the day that communication becomes nothing more than a look into the camera on our phone or computer screen. The day a wave hello happens through Facetime instead of a wave to your next door neighbor. Technology is truly one of my worst fears, and I’m afraid that day may already be here. If we would rather trade real individuals with real personalities and real faults with fake Instagram profiles and a Facebook message, then what is the point of our existence? We built cellphones to communicate with our families, or to get a message from our mom when she’s ready to pick us up. We built cellphones to make our lives easier; we did not create them to take away from living our lives in the real world. If you are to get anything from this article, I want you to ask yourself this: Who are the people that will be there for you in your time of need? Are they the people behind your phone screen, or are they people right in front of you? The people behind the cell phone screen can’t jump into your reality whenever you please, it’s the people right in front of you that will be there for you- so make it count. Do you want to spend the rest of your life being a glassy-eyed zombie? |