You see them everywhere, blocking people from engaging in real, human communication. At restaurants. At coffee shops. On dining room tables in homes.
The smartphones that seemed so exciting a decade ago, mini-computers that sat in your hands and allowed you to stay connected with friends and clients far away, are now preventing us from forming the very relationships we want so much to develop and maintain.
Think about the first time you met a close friend or truly connected with someone in your family or business network. You were not staring at a little rectangular item in your hand. Instead, your head was up, and instead of reading posts online, you were looking into their eyes, listening to their words and the tone of their voices. You smiled and formed a bond, one that might last your entire life.
Now, when you enter a restaurant, you see couples connecting with people in cyberspace instead of each other. It’s anyone’s guess what has them enrapt with the little rectangle in their hands, but likely they are on social media or playing games. While using phones, Canadians spend 35 per cent of their time on social media, 16 per cent on games and 15 per cent on entertainment, comScore reported this year.
Real communication, it seems, has evaporated. We are now more focussed on the trivial developments in acquaintances’ lives than we are on the people in front of us. Social media trumps real interaction, real discussion and real connection. We are talking to people who aren’t there instead of people who are.
Alarm bells about this problem started ringing years ago. The difference is now it’s the norm not just for shy teenagers but for society at large. In 2015, there are 29 million cellphone users in Canada, up from nine million in 2000, according to the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association. Canada has the highest social media penetration in the world; 82 per cent are connected to a social network like Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.
In Squamish as elsewhere, almost everyone brings cellphones into restaurants and even into meetings where communication is the objective. In schools, students are glued to screens instead of discussing ideas.
Stuck to our phones, we have now limited our lives to those who were already in it and ideas that can be expressed through Internet memes. With cellphones limiting the human communication that is the fabric of any community, our lives will become smaller and our ideas stunted.
– Editor Christine Endicott
