Have we become "phone zombies"?

I just don't see how this is a valid comparison at all. Zombies are mindless beings with no thought to what they are doing. People who are on their phone could be reading a book, learning something new, making a sale, planning a vacation, making dinner reservations for their family, working, talking to a friend, giving support to someone in need on nofap, etc.

We are not "zombies" for using our phones often. It's not like people are just staring blankly at a screen. They're doing stuff. They're just doing it on the internet instead of in person, because we have technology that allows that now, and it makes it more convenient and possible to talk to people from all over the world, or communicate with a client immediately instead of having to waste time setting up a meeting and having them come down to your office. I mean, what would they be doing in person that would be so much better and less zombie-like for you? Going to a park? Taking a walk? While says thise things are better than reading an ebook or talking to a friend?

None of this is equivalent to being a zombie. Yall are overreacting. Just let people enjoy the entertainment that they prefer. Your preferred forms of entertainment are not better than everyone else's.

 

So you didnt rly want a convo u wanted a yes... also noone said anything abt ignoring someone your with

 

A ton of people read ebooks on their phones....

Sure sounds like you do to me, but okay.

My point wasn't to imply that "most" people are reading a book when they're looking at their phones. My point was to highlight that it's rude and stupid to judge people as being zombies when you have no idea what they're doing on their phones.

Also, if you think it's rude for people to interrupt their in person conversations to take a phone call, that's fine. I would agree that that's rude. But most of the people here aren't talking about that. They're simply seeing people looking at their phones and immediately thinking negatively of that person, which is dumb and arrogant. It's just a way to make yourself feel like you're better than someone else, when in reality, you have absolutely no idea how that person spends their time or what they're using their phone for.

 

I’m not saying there isn’t a problem and I’m not saying there is a problem. We can tend to over generalize and exaggerate something when individuals or groups of people tick our pet peeves boxes.

 

Nobody compared social media use to book reading. I simply said that people use phones for a lot of purposes, and not all of them make you a "zombie."

 

YES!

 

Sad but true

 

I'm not sure that we've become phone zombies already, but we have an addiction. We can't live without it, we have our phones everywhere and use it almost all the time. When we get to work, school, uni or somewhere else, when we eat, when we're bored, we even sleep with it. But, otherwise, it has all the necessary things which are vital for our everyday's life. So, it's hard to say whether that situation is 100% negative or positive, I think that it's something in between.

 

I recently worked on a very informal research paper for my company that tracked and quantified our student's cell phone + tablet usage. We took a handful of participants (18 to 24 age group primarily) and used apps like My Screen Time to log their average daily screen time and also categorized what kind of apps were being used the most.

The students averaged just under 8 hours of cellphone/tab usage daily. Social media made up a disproportionate amount of this screen time and ranged from 30% all the way to 86% of total screen time (average was 52.5%). Entertainment apps like YouTube, Netflix and Hulu represented another large chunk of total screen time (10-20%). Study/reading apps used by most of our students such as Amazon Kindle, Sheppard Air, and Gleim represented less than 10% of total screen time. The rest were comprised of gaming and creative apps, but these times were less consistent than the others.

Obviously this paper was completely unscientific due to its insignificant sample size. We basically just wanted to get some awareness out there to the students about their cell phone usage and how it can affect learning. But still, the numbers were kind of shocking to see. Even my own numbers were higher than I thought.

People on this forum should know this more than anyone: when something is accessible, easy, and endlessly novel, it's hard to say no.