Aug 20, 2018
Here, at TEA of Life Podcast, we want you to do life better...YOUR life better, and we want to give you the encouragement and tools you need in order to achieve this. This week, I talk about a video that’s being shared around Facebook about the effects of using cell phones. They call this effect, Digital Dementia, and their purpose is to persuade you to stop using your cell phone so often. Although I agree with lowering the use of our digital devices, I am not sure that I agree with some of their reasoning.
The video that I talk about starts out with slow, emotional piano music and a guy who looks like he about to have a nervous breakdown. I’m sure you’ve seen it. He says that he cannot even imagine what the rates of suicide, homicide, rates of depression, and accidental deaths due to overdose is going to look like in the future. He is blaming all of this on the use of cell phones.
After this scene is over, it automatically goes to another guy who introduces the Digital Dementia word that spawned the name of this episode. He says that we rely on our smartphones so much, that it is making us stupid. Now, I have watched other videos of people who talk about how they don’t need to know certain things because Google can tell them anything they need to know, so I understand where these comments are coming from, and this is similar to a conversation that my husband and I have had together before, but, this guy in the video is saying that we have lost the ability to memorize phone numbers, and he’s referring to pretty much everyone in this statement. He equates this to having our arm in a sling for 6 months and the muscles atrophy because they are not being used. He implies that using our phones to keep our schedules and to-do lists is not using our brain muscles to remember things. It seems that he’s assuming that we aren’t filling our brain with other things instead.
Visit teaoflifepodcast.com for show notes, links, and a transcript of this show.