Saturday, January 22, 2011

#10 Somebody Has to Say It


Cell phones make our society stupid. There...I said it.

Yesterday, I was at Ocean State Job Lot, a quirky store that is massive in size and has just about anything you want...but the aisles are so tiny, two carriages can barely make it through. One lady parked herself in the middle of an aisle, leaned on her carriage bar and was concentrating on her cellphone (texting? web browsing? who cares - it was annoying either way). So many people politely said "excuse me" to get by her. She ignored 2, glared at one, and scoffed at another. She could have very easily moved her carriage aside and then took up her task on the phone.

The other thing that brings us down with our cell phones is general courtesy. I can't stand it when I'm speaking to someone in person, their phone rings, then they grab the phone and say "oh, it's so and so" and picks it up. No "excuse me" or push the mute button. Or when you're at the store and the people gabbing in the checkout line - hang up, finish what you're doing and call them back.

And this one I'm guilty of - who knows anyone's phone numbers any more? I don't know my husband's cell phone number. Why should I? It's programed on my phone - I just push his face and it dials...easy!

Now, our phones take us to where we want with navigation (men everywhere are dancing - now they don't need to ask for directions!!), pretend to be photographers (don't get me started about cell phone photogs at weddings...), they schedule our personal and business appointments in a matter of seconds, they allow us to track our kids, they allow us to accept payments, we can even shoot pigs with angry birds (some of you might not get that one...)!!!

But in general - I think cell phones make us stupid...just look at the statistics of car crashes caused by cell phones/texting.

[side note, the child in the photo is not using a real cell phone - this is a Tinker Bell plastic one. No child was made stupid for this blog post! And the photo was taken by my 5 year old - pretty cool technique!!]

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