This past September I babeled on how the majority of American’s believe their quality of life, and their productivity in general, is greatly improved by the use of Personal Digital Assistants. In that post I concluded that we are witnessing the beginning of what will be a radical revolution in what it means to work.
This month I want to discuss a new study that sheds light on how cell phones and the internet are bringing the human family closer together as we begin the 21st Century.
According to recent research by the Pew Internet & American Life Project,
- 89% of married-with-children households own multiple cell phones, and nearly half own three or more mobile devices
- 66% of married-with-children households have a high speed broadband internet connection at home.
- 70% of couples in which both partners own a cell phone contact each other daily to say hello or chat
- 42% of parents contact their children on a daily basis using a cell phone, making cell phones the most popular communications tool between parents and children
Clearly physical distance, the great barrier to communication in past epochs, has been conquered. With a cell phone turned on, a person can be reached pretty much anywhere on the planet. And one day, when internet and cell phone coverage has spread to all households on all continents, there won’t be a soul who can’t enjoy the novelty of instant communication.
The Good: Instant Gratification
The popularity of mobile phones and the internet has everything to do with freedom. These devices allow us to communicate whenever the desire arises, and there’s nothing like instant gratification to increase an object’s popularity.
For families and couples, these devices are that much more tempting because they have the potential to decrease the amount of time spent worrying about the status of loved ones. If there’s a bomb scare at school your kids can call you immediately. If your lover gets in an accident on the highway they can call you immediately. If your buddy goes to order White Castle for the party but he forgets what you wanted, your instructions are just a phone call away.
The Bad: Instant Gratification
Long gone are the days of the carrier pigeon. Long gone are the days of patience and personal space. The fact is, the freedom mobile devices grant us is really a double-edged sword.
With the ability to initiate communication whenever we want we open ourselves to a potentially endless onslaught from the outside world. Yes, we can always just turn the phone off and let every call go straight to voicemail. But, at the end of the day we must always return to our phone and our messages. We must always call back.
This issue becomes especially apparent when dealing with people who have convinced themselves that instant communication is a necessity, rather than the privilege that it truly is. With these people, it practically becomes a mortal sin to not return a message or phone call immediately after it has been received.
The Bottom Line
Time is running out to maintain any semblance of “old-world” personal space. As the wheel of time moves on, so will global dependency on instant communication. Future generations born into an ever-connected world will lack any memory of a life without the ability to instantly communicate whenever they feel like it. What effect this will have, only time can tell. But, I’m gonna go out on a limb and predict a future ripe with global ADD.
Good night, and good luck.
12 Comments
Is what to order from White Castle ever really in question?
When I was about 7 years old (long time ago), I remember one of the rides at Disney’s EPCOT was called Horizons. The ride predicted that this would eventually happen with advanced communications.
The Horizons ride closed down in 1999 and replaced with the Mission: Space attraction. The high-tech communications predictions were then moved to the final sequence of Spaceship Earth.
There was a model of a globe about 6 feet in diameter. It simulated communications taking place around the world by showing little strings of light moving from point a to point b. It then showed how communications increase as time moves forward starting with the invention of the telephone and ending with about the year 2020. The simulation started with a a few pings of light firing back and fourth around the globe and ended with a light show….visually similar to the way cancer and viruses spread.
Evidently, ADD is becoming more apparent in our society. It seems like you meet at least one person, perhaps a couple, that suffer from this problem. I am unsure if this is due to a more connected world (TV, internet, cellphone, etc) or due to our society taking great pride in labeling people based on their behavior…and then of course (over)prescribing medicine for them.
I refuse to believe that ADD is a recent development. Just like there were deformed and retarded people throughout history, there had to have been people with ADD…..who knows some sufferers of this “malicious” disease could have been creators such as DaVinci, Ben Franklin, Thomas Edison, etc….
With the advent of technology people will only continue to fall deeper and deeper into a digital coma forgetting about the real world and only pursue instant gratification.
ADD is interesting because there hasn’t been much successful research to pin down what it really is…
From having worked with ADD individuals I can say for sure they have real issues with self-control, and they tend to be significantly more impulsive than the average individual.
ADD has definitely been around for centuries, but mental diseases develop like physical diseases…the right environmental factors can exponentially flare up a disease that normally wouldn’t become so prominent. Add overpopulation to the mix and you’re talking big numbers across the board.
In a culture that encourages impulsive gratification, ADD is naturally gonna spike…especially when there’s technology that perfectly feeds the fire.
I think that ADD is the product of our society weakening in the last few decades. I found this definition of Generation-Y:
Also, more people have ADD now becuase there is simply that much more to pay attention to. Our parents had a tv with like 10 channels and 1 phone in the house. Look how rediculous things are now with hundreds of TV channels, endless cyberspace, multiple phones (landline and cell) with multiple options (data, text messaging). How can you not have ADD today? You need it just to pay attention to your daily routine of always-on connection.
That’s a good point…its way too easy to be overstimulated nowadays.
On the flipside, its hard to imagine that there was a time in America when most evenings were spent sitting on the porch, “shootin’ the sh&t”…can you imagine the current generations finding that kind of activity engaging!?
Also, who exactly falls into Generation Y? And what site is that quote from?
Nothing special just Wikipedia. It is pretty common knowledge though.
Another point I would like to mention is that there weren’t always as many psychologists and psychiatrists as there are today to diagnose ADD. Just because there are more cases of ADD now, doesn’t mean there weren’t as much say 100 years ago when there were far fewer professionals to make the diagnosis.
This is sort of like news and conflict around the world. Because live news can be brought to us instantly via Internet and TV, an illusion could be created that there is more war and terror happening now than there was say 10, 20, 30, or even 40 years ago. The only difference now is that conflict is more visible.
Yeah I had heard about Generation Y, but I didn’t know if I was part of X or Y. Turns out I’m a “Cold Y”…born in the early 80’s and I can remember life before the Cold War ended in ‘91.
forgive me for my late response to your wisdom regarding Post tramatic Slavery syndrome.
I hope your understanding of other topics you have educateables on is so well thought out.
I pray you are not a teacher or have normal students if you are. have a good life andy.
Eric, perhaps you are lost. I beleive you are looking for another post where your comment might make more sense to other readers.
Haha, Eric, why do you pray I’m not a teacher, or have normal students if I am?
Andrew,
If you were a teacher, any students of yours would be normal only prior to your tutelage.
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