Okay, get the children out of the room because I’m now going to deliver what my daughter Brooks has dubbed my “stodgy old-man rant.”
Of course, she’s wrong about the first two parts — that I’m stodgy and old — but I will accept the rant part.
I just can’t hold back any longer. As far as I’m concerned, the Smartphone and the iPhone — which are less phone than constant communication devices — are, to some degree, ruining social interaction as we have known in since the advent of civilized society.
My benchmark for this judgment is my parents. They were two of the smartest and most gracious and refined people I have ever known. My father had a CPA and master’s degree and was a college professor most of his career. My mother had a master’s in English Literature and also taught at the college level. My father was a brilliant conversationalist and story teller, and my mother always got in her share of conversation and made each person around her feel like they had her undivided attention — which they did.
So, I can tell you unequivocally that the presence of a dinging, beeping, buzzing or ringing electronic device in social company would have absolutely horrified both of them. I’m pretty sure that if they were alive today and had people over who had their phones out — referring to them every few seconds or minutes for “important” updates from the outside world — those people would never have been invited back.
God bless them. I tell you, it makes me proud to be able to say that about them and know exactly what their reaction would have been.
On his deathbed — he died eight years ago — my father didn’t say, “JimmyC, promise me you’ll never pull out your cell phone when in the company of others,” but I did scare the crap out of him more than once when I was highway driving, talking on the phone and holding the steering wheel with one hand.
I don’t do that any more. I seldom talk on the phone while driving, and when I do, I use the Sync system — when it works.
Much worse than talking while driving, to me, is being with people in their (or your) home or at a restaurant and one or more of them have their phones out, either on the table or in their hands — fielding texts, emails and sometimes calls.
To me, that is virtually the same as looking over the shoulder of someone you’re talking to at a party and checking out the crowd.
As daughter Brooks so aptly put it (and by the way, even though she knows a rant when she sees one, she totally agrees with me), with the “phone-out” culture, “it’s become socially acceptable to be rude.”
Amen, Brooks, amen.
…The difficult part about this is that I have some very good friends who do exactly what I have described. My best friend, who lives in our hometown of Louisville, has become a slave to his phone. He’s a busy realtor, which is one reason for his dependency, but still, even in the evenings, he frequently lets himself be sucked into the “I-must-be-missing-something-more-important-elsewhere” syndrome and yields to the temptation to absorb himself in the phone.
Also, Patty does it to some extent. My wife! What’s a guy to do? Am I going to dump my best friend and my wife? Of course not. I’m stuck with these people…Scratch that; it’s off the record…What I mean is I’m going to be true to the friends I’ve already got and just grit my teeth and suffer the indignity. But as for any fledgling, prospective friends who find their phones more interesting than me — well, they’re not going to be good-chum candidates. They will find themselves on permanent hold.
Now, I guess you’re wondering how “Mr. Manners” of the local blogosphere handles the phone dilemma.
Well, I (that’s who I was referring to, in case you were confused) have a flip phone, and all I do is text occasionally and make and receive calls.
I keep the phone on vibrate 95 percent of the time. (That can cause problems, of course, because recently I lost the phone in the house for 24 hours and couldn’t find it partly because it didn’t ring when I called it with Patty’s phone.)
If I feel the phone vibrate when I’m actively engaged with others, I don’t pull it out and check to see whose calling or texting. I wait until there’s a break and I go to the restroom or another room away from the gathering and check there. If it’s important, I will make a quick call or send a text. As we all know, however, 95 percent of the time, it’s shit that can wait — usually a long time.
I’m not suggesting that we turn back the hands of time and go back to flip phones. What I am suggesting is that the dipsticks out there who can’t muster the willpower to resist the seductive siren of their cellphones wise up and develop some good cellphone manners.
Brooks said it’s become socially acceptable to be rude. No, I won’t accept that. It’s never acceptable to be rude. If you’re guilty, knock it off.
…I’m done spewing.
https://43rdplace.wordpress.com/2015/03/08/staying-smart-with-my-smartphone/
Hi Jim – I had my own rant about this earlier in the year. Cell phones are destroying our attention and our manners and will probably eventually destroy some relationships.
It is always a pleasure to be with you and Eric, Kate…We have similar word views and share many values.
You sir, like me, ARE a stodgy old man, but 100% correct. I, too, own a flip phone and refuse to go over to the dark side and get a “smart phone” like my wife did about 6 months ago. Since then her IQ has dropped about 10 points, which means smart phone is an oxymoron and the people who use them constantly are just plain morons. Thanks for letting me rant, but I’ve got to answer my phone now, apparrently I’ve just won a free cruise!
Priceless…You need a blog, Bill.
Try on this idea, instead of thinking of them as “morons”, a hugely insensitive and non PC pejorative by the way, think of your friends, family and colleagues as ADDICTS.
So, how do you have a convo (oh I’m so hip) with an addict of any kind? Do you have a background of relatedness to say something like, “Gosh, isn’t it something how attached WE ALL seem to be to our phones?” (This is not a makewrong, to start. It’s an open-ended statement that invites a discussion. Perhaps talk about Pavlov and brains and dopamine.
Follow with:
“May I ask you a favor? To tell you the truth, it hurts my feelings when you constantly interrupt and grab your phone to see if there is something or someone more important right this minute. So my “favor” or REQUEST is this: When you and I are together, could we both agree to put our phones in our pockets, and put them on vibrate, and just talk, enjoy one another’s company? We can take a break every 15 minutes, if that supports whatever else is important in your life today…”
We wouldn’t allow friends to blow smoke in our face. Or snort heroin. Or get shitfaced drunk. We would hopefully say something. So how can we now be leaders in addressing America’s newest addiction, the phone.
Stop suffering. Speak up. Can they hear you now??
Brilliant, Tracy. You have been wasting your time in advertising. You should be a human relations counselor. This pervasive problem presents a great opportunity. There is money to be made resetting the landscape of civility. Thank you!
Jim, what do you think of the latest Ellingson and Dearborn developments? Unless I’m missing something, I can’t for the life of me understand the attitude of the townspeople in Dearborn.
Can’t make heads or tails of the Ellingson development and did not have time to read the Dearborn story before heading out of town.
The behavior is simply insidious in how it encroaches our lives. Thanks for the heads up
During the Royals parade, young family members who were SO privileged to be allowed to ride on the truck with their famous Royals player Dad, had their heads buried in their phones.
Pathetic and sick. It’s narcissism. Wanting to tweet, look at me, or needing to see who had noticed them. It is creating addicted brains.
Put away your damn phones!
At one time, circa 1974, it was every newspaper persons dream to have the Associated Press’ National, State, and Sports wire installed in their home…which was an impossibility…now, thru technology, it is reality. Revel in that fact just as Grandpa would in relation to flying.