The iPhone: Catalyst for a Slow Societal Death?
Video courtesy of Bernadette Berdychowski. Photos courtesy of Anastassia Gliadkovskaya
“Next stop 86th Street,” says the automated voice over the speaker of the 4 Express Train. It’s 8:21 a.m., according to my iPhone 7. Wearing a 40-pound blue and yellow backpacking pack, with a copy of the 1376-page Norton Anthropology of Poetry in hand, I shove my way onto the packed train. I mumble meaningless apologies to my fellow morning commuters—none of us love being packed like apples in an overstuffed Trader Joe’s produce crate.
Every passenger— minus an older lady wearing a long skirt with messy hair and no makeup, and a tourist couple holding cups of Au Bon Pain coffee— is fixated on their little cellular device.
The doors ding, shut halfway, reopen, and then close again. The train lurches forward. A middle-aged Mexican woman wearing a grey jacket and pencil skirt with shiny leather shoes stands directly in front of me. Pieces of brightly colored candy crash across the screen of her iPhone 7 as she successfully clears another level of Candy Crush. A white, buff young businessman wearing a perfectly ironed grey suit stands against the “Do not lean on door” sign, reading a WSJ article on his iPhone and boasting $160 cordless earbuds.
Every passenger— minus an older lady wearing a long skirt with messy hair and no makeup, and a tourist couple holding cups of Au Bon Pain coffee— is fixated on their little cellular device.
At 86th Street, a woman with sagging, dark skin carrying a large satchel pushes her way onto the packed train, and her eyes scan for a nonexistent free seat. The young man sitting nearest to her plays Slither-io, never lifting his eyes from the screen.
How would human interactions change if people noticed the faces of other people on the subway? Would the New Yorker attitude of, “I do me, you do you, and we pretend the other doesn’t exist except in cases of emergency” still exist, if we didn’t constantly have a phone vying for our undivided attention? Has the iPhone made us slowly start to abandon seeing the real people in front of us, and only letting us see the screen?
While iPhones can be used well to connect people, transmit information easily, and do tasks more efficiently, they also have negative side effects—creating connection barriers between real people, sapping time, and causing user’s brains to be in a state of constant overload. The volume of information being constantly transmitted, from news to text messages, necessitating (what feels like) immediate response, causes the human brain to be rewired in a way that no pre-iPhone generation has experienced.
Have we truly thought through how much instant communication is changing our interactions for good or ill?
I was chatting with my dad and grandmother, and they were reminiscing about the 1980s. My dad, a doctor in residency, had a pager. To return the call, he would either have to find a landline, or if traveling, pull of the road and put a couple quarters into a pay phone to dial the hospital—a number he had to memorize.
How different is that from having an ever-buzzing phone? Have we truly thought through how much instant communication is changing our interactions for good or ill?
Let’s take a look at some statistics. Apple claims that iPhone users unlock their phones 80 times per day. Research firm Dscout found that users touch their smartphone screen, on average, upwards of 2,600 times per day.
If you’re like me, you’ve opened the Instagram app to check a few notifications while laying in bed at night. Thirty minutes later, you’re still on Instagram and feeling regretful that you don’t know what value checking all the recent stories added to your life.
You’ve also probably felt anxiety upon not being with your phone. Anderson Cooper reported on 60 Minutes that researchers at California State University tested subjects to verify the theory that people experience physical symptoms of anxiety being away from their phones. The researchers put the subjects’ iPhones out of their sight and reach, and sent texts. The subjects’ heart rates and breathing sped up, indicating stress.
But this addiction doesn’t end with the individual. Statistics show that pedestrian deaths have skyrocketed as a result of both pedestrians and drivers looking at their phones, according to USA Today.
So what should be done to combat this ever growing leviathan of technology addiction?
Let’s start listening to the experiences of our parents and grandparents, not discounting them as old people who don’t understand how to be progressive. Let’s start conversations in our own spheres—family, friends, or coworkers—about how we use technology and why. If we need to adjust our habits, let’s figure out how to keep each other accountable so that we can reclaim our lives from electronics, letting them enhance rather than steal our time. Let’s notice the other humans in our lives, from the woman on the subway needing a seat to our friend needing us to ask how they’re doing.
The opinions reflected in this OpEd are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of staff, faculty and students of The King's College