NOTES TO SELF: SMARTPHONES ARE DANGEROUS
The majority of us carry One of the most destructive forces in the world around with us everywhere we go without even realizing it. I’m talking about the smart phone, a device that can be one of the most powerful tools in your arsenal if used correctly.
It is NOT used correctly, though, by many, many, MANY people who allow themselves to become mindless consumers of vapid content spread out across a growing number of social platforms. Smart phones destroy our attention spans, our creativity, our motivation and drive, our individuality, our physical and psychological independence, they ruin our posture, they strain our eyes, they ruin our sleep, they make us short-tempered and irritable all the while providing us with a gateway into a global hivemind where millions upon millions of people have relinquished their individuality and become just another faceless body within an amorphous mass of anthropomorphic consumerism.
Have you ever asked yourself why social media is free? And after asking that have you ever wondered how it is that the owners of these companies are among the wealthiest in the world? How is it that companies that give you their flagship product without charging you can be so rich?
It’s because you are a gold mine to them. When it comes to businesses this large, money is behind everything. The more they can get you to consume the more money they make. In other words, it is in their best interest to make you as reliant and as dependent upon social media and your phones as they possibly can. It is in their best interest to turn you into a mindless consumer who spends all day cycling between the same four apps before eventually buying something. And before long you’re out in public, thumbs on your screen and your heads down, trading the beautiful world that’s right in front of you for the fake one that’s eroding your mind and devouring who you are as a human being alongside every part of your personality that makes you special. Then eventually you’ll find yourself in a dark hole where life feels miserable and depressing and you’ll have no idea why.
But in my view, the most dangerous thing about smart phones and portable technology in general is that it robs us of our creativity and ability to think independently… as an individual. It steals our sense of curiosity and adventure. It makes us incapable of thinking about, well, really anything. The idea of sitting by yourself in silence becomes ludicrous and every time we have to think about something that requires hard, disciplined thinking, like solving a problem or working through the difficulties and discomfort of any given social situation then we give up and retreat to our phones where things are easy, where the only thing that’s required of us is our attention, our compliance, and our money.
Smart phones are tools and wildly useful ones at that. But there is also a dark and insidious aspect to their convenience. Don’t let smart phones destroy you. Because believe it or not, they will.
End of log.