7 Reasons Why Your Smartphone Is Not Your Friend

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Take a look around you, right now. Notice that everybody you see has some sort of smartphone in their palm, holding on to it for dear life. In fact, they probably don’t even see you seeing them because their faces are buried in the video display of a device, unaware of the toxic relationship they have with it.

Commercials and other people will have you to believe that your life is incomplete with a smartphone in your hand, infused with your arm like some character out of “The Terminator,” but that’s not the case. Much like in “The Terminator: Rise of the Machines” or Johnny 5’s “Short Circuit,” the machines are coming to life right before our crimson-colored, marijuana-glazed eyes, and the consequences are already becoming disastrous. You’re probably reading this on your smartphone, aren’t you?

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As much as an asset or fancy accessory as it can be, the smartphone is not your friend, and if you don’t believe me, check out these seven reasons why I’ve come to this conclusion.

You Are A Constant Target
There was a time when people paid attention. Now, everywhere you go — at any given time in any given place — 85% of the crowd is looking down, at their beloved smartphones. We have collectively become slaves to technology and potential victims of society. A perfect example of this is at the mall or on public transportation. Every time I’m on the bus, I can’t help but to think about how easy it would be to rob everyone on board. Not because I’m tough or crazy or lavished in poverty, but because none of those idiots are paying any attention to the world spinning around them.

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For all the positive solutions that technology has afforded us, it’s made us willing targets to predators and no one but the predators seems to notice. Sure texting is fun, but getting your goods goonswiped because you weren’t paying attention can be brutally embarrassing and possibly life-threatening.

You No Longer Thinking For Yourself
When I was a kid, I took a certain amount of pride in knowing how to speak correct English and write with cohesion. Those abilities are now defunct and unnecessary due to the fact that your smartphone refuses to let you make any mistakes. In fact, it takes more work to disable the auto-correct in order to misspell things than it does to think about proper grammar. Sometimes my children text me and my first response is pointing out all the words they spelled wrong. The sad part is that I know their devices have auto-correct, which makes it that much worse. At this rate, spelling errors on homework will be a thing of the past, even if the teachers know that their students aren’t that bright.

Pick a random teenager and start this sentence: “i before e except after…” and watch their response be something like “after 2:20, ’cause that’s when school get out!” A couple of months ago I met a child who had no idea that “y” is sometimes a vowel. A piece of my soul died during that conversation.

It Makes It Harder To Focus
With even the most primitive smartphone, you have access to games, the internet, porn, social media, just about any type of distraction that one can imagine. This makes concentrating on specific things an arduous task. And let’s be honest; everyone isn’t capable of multitasking like they claim to be. This causes for work to be done with half-assed effort and focus becomes an impossibility. For example: go to church and count the amount of bowed heads you see. All those folks ain’t praying, no matter how loud the preacher man is yelling. Those heathens are on Instagram. Watching sports and award ceremonies has become harder thanks to the easy access to social media and the need to participate and new shows encourage you to “live tweet” while they’re on. This is an obvious contributor to the adult on-set ADHD we are willingly creating in society.

Recently I put a rule into effect for my family when we go out to eat; I make everyone, including myself, stack their devices on the table and engage in conversation. As enjoyable as it is, watching my children salivate over their electronics for 45 minutes is even more fun.

It Remembers More Than You Do
Back in the day, I carried a little phone book around in my pocket/backpack to remember all my important phone numbers. After dialing the numbers a few times, naturally, I began to store them to memory. From buddies to girls to relatives houses, I had all the contact information I needed tucked ever so conveniently in the back of my brain. Now, address books are like photo albums — a clunky chunk of unnecessary bullshit. Your smartphone remembers the numbers you dial, and if you’re proficient in your laziness, you can assign then to a “button” for speed-calling. Hell, you don’t even have to remember important dates if you’re not too handicapped to remember how to store them on your device’s calendar.

As a matter of fact, I don’t even think kids memorize their time tables anymore because smartphones come with calculators, too.

You No Longer Need To “Hunt” Your “Prey”
Some years back, getting a girl was a chore. One needed to invent clever lines and approach them in public places because there was no shortcut to ‘tang procurement. With internet accessibility, all you really need to do is Tweet a “Hey Boo,” or gain access to their inbox. While I won’t credit this to some type of baby boom or STD pandemic, it sure has made locating, isolating, & capturing a sex partner much more hassle free. On the brighter side, though, without a direct need to impress the other person (unless you’re Skyping — & even then it’s not a must), both parties can save money on gas & fancy clothing. Now, with “Catfishing” recently being exposed as such a common phenomenon, I predict that online dating mate-hunting will experience a regress, due to the fact that the girl you met online won’t be the girl you meet in public. After awhile, things’ll be back to good ol’ bus stop stalking and street harassment, like it should be.

There’s an old saying: “Anything worth having is worth working for.” Smartphones make finding a mate easier than soliciting a prostitute and that speaks volumes to the caliber of chicks (or cats) one can snag online with minimal effort. It should be no confusion as to why that “Catfish” show is so popular.

You’re Always Home

Remember answering machines? They are the voicemail’s grandfather. They stayed at home, taking messages for you when you were out and about. Or when you were at home and didn’t want to be bothered. Thanks to you trusty smartphone, though, you are now always available to be reached and very few excuses are good enough as to why you couldn’t answer your phone. It even lets the caller know that you’ve sent them to your voice mail, further adding insult to the emotional injury of you not wanting to talk to them. Thanks to your smartphone, bill collectors can find you at all times, telemarketers can reach you whenever they choose, and those friends who you try to avoid can call, text, IM, BBM, tweet, ping, email, or — in some cases — locate you whether you like it or not.

Gone are the days of being unreachable and you can thank technology for that.

It’s The Ultimate Snitch
One thing people still don’t seem to be aware of — even after years of smartphones taking over people’s lives — is the locator option that every device has. You don’t have to be tech savvy or a gadget geek to know that your phone’s settings are the meat and potatoes of its operation. This is where you tell it what you can and cannot do. It’s tantamount to giving your kids instructions before you turn them loose into a dangerous world. If nothing else, you want to be sure that your phone’s location setting is turned off. Why, you ask? Because I’ve “seen” plenty of people get hurt, robbed, even killed because they were so easy to track. It may sound like the plot of a psycho-thriller movie (and I’m sure there’s one about it somewhere out there), but it’s as real as the crime rate in Chicago.

And for what it’s worth, social media sites offer the same personal availability, so you better watch your backs while you are tweeting recklessly to total strangers or bragging about how well your two-week, out-of-state vacation is going.

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