What is that one thing that you would not like to lose in your life? If you asked this question to the teenagers five years ago then the answer would have been friends, family or some of their ‘productive’ habit; but if you ask the same question to the millennial generation today, then the answer would be Snapchat streaks. Today in this ‘virtual world’ when you hear phrases like – ‘Hey, I completed my 300 streak today’, ‘Did you see the wedding photos I posted on my Instagram story?’ or when you see ( if you’re also not doing the same activity) a common scene when you travel ‘heads bowed down, ears plucked with earphones, eyes on the screen watching religiously either some movie or western series’ – you might not find these phrases or scenes peculiar as you have got accustomed to hear or watch people doing that. But what many researchers have found or ‘a human being with common sense’ can find is that this is not a normal behaviour instead its behavioural addiction. Tristian Harris, director and co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, aptly describes this human state as “Technology in its own force is pushing our culture in a very specific direction.”
Over the past decade smartphones have revolutionised our lives in ways that go well beyond on how we communicate, navigate or educate ourselves, however these benefits seem to have come at a high cost to our mental and social lives. Smartphones have made humans an ‘uncapable thing’ that now finds nirvana in his device, a normal routine of a millennial starts off by turning off alarm on his phone, then after an all day of scrolling switching it off at midnight after some hours of binging. An attitude ‘I have just co-opted to this mainstream culture of using my phone wherever and whenever I can’ has been adopted.
“If you see someone in a café sipping coffee and staring out the window, it’s less likely that they’re enjoying a quiet moment and more likely that their device has simply run out of charge.”
Yudhijit Bhattacharjee, Smartphones revolutionise our lives – but at what cost?
The ‘innocent victims’ of this ‘distracted world’ have been the infants. A baby who doesn’t yet know how to speak, but now easily knows how to use an iPad. A 2015 study by Hilda Kabali shows that 30% of the children under the age of 2 know easily how to use an iPad but haven’t learnt how to speak. The concern is early brain development is dependent on which environment and surroundings children are in. Age between 0-2, the brain doubles in size and continues to grow until they become 25 years old. Studies show that 3 to 4 years old children who know how to use smartphones have motor difficulty in grasping objects like pen, blocks and paper. Kids are never going to be fully adapted and become evolved social creatures because if they spend all their time behind the screen they will never learn what “feedback” is. For example – Kids have to learn what it feels like and what are the emotions involved when other kids snatch toys from them. What’s worrying is that how will this generation of kids who have spent their development stage in front of the screens look like?
The question is why and when did we give up control of our lives to a single brick of steel and silicon and lost our ability to enjoy a moment without having an urge to document it for a virtual audience?
Digitally Undigital 