Tonight's picture was taken in March of 2007. Mattie was almost five years old and was visiting Key West, Florida with us and Peter's parents. Along our adventures that day, we came across a dinosaur sculpture made out of metal. As you can see, Mattie stopped to give us his dino impression!
Quote of the day: Imagine combining a mailbox, a newspaper, a TV, a radio, a photo album, a public library and a boisterous party attended by everyone you know, and then compressing them all into a single, small, radiant object. That is what a smartphone represents to us. No wonder we can’t take our minds off it. ~ Adrian Ward
About a year ago, a friend of mine gave me an article entitled, How Smartphones Hijack our Minds. I attached a link to the article below for you to check it out for yourself. I am NOT sure why it took me a year to read this article. All I know is the Foundation has busy seasons and when I am busy, I can push non-critical things off to my later "to do" pile. I am glad that the article landed up in that pile at least, because it makes for a very interesting read. Especially if you are like me and glued to your smart phone.
So where did my cell phone addiction come from? I am sure everyone has a different answer to this question if posed to them. Mine happened while Mattie was enduring cancer treatments in the hospital. I did not turn to my phone for information, or for photos, and I certainly did not turn to it to access social media (though I am not sure Facebook and other outlets were in existence or popular in 2008). What I do know is that my phone served as a life line to the outside world. I was able to communicate by emails and texts to our Team Mattie coordinators and to other friends and family. Literally the beauty of it was I could send a message 24/7. Given that was how life worked in the hospital, the cell phone fit that frenetic and anxiety ridden life style. Yet after Mattie died, I can't say my need to have my phone dissipated. Instead all the habits I picked up in the hospital remain with me today. For me the phone relieves an anxiety of potentially being alone and unable to get support in a crisis. The cancer crisis maybe physically gone, but it most certainly isn't mentally for me.
I captured some quotes from the article below which I thought were noteworthy. But in a nutshell, having constant physical attachment to one's phone appears to affect our concentration, ability to remember, to think logically and critically, and even worse it impacts our ability to connect with the human beings sitting right in front of us. Though I did not read this article until today, intuitively I just know that my phone has to be in my purse when I am talking to people face to face and along time ago I shut off any rings or noises my phone made. I found those noises so startling that I could never get any work done. I find it interesting the natural accommodations I have made with my cell phone usage, especially when compared to some of the research findings in this article. Check out some of the findings from the article, and see how it could apply to you................................
- Not only do our phones shape our thoughts in deep and complicated ways, but the effects persist even when we aren’t using the devices. As the brain grows dependent on the technology, the research suggests, the intellect weakens.
- There has seen mounting evidence that using a smartphone, or even hearing one ring or vibrate, produces a welter of distractions that makes it harder to concentrate on a difficult problem or job. The division of attention impedes reasoning and performance.
- Researchers examined how smartphones affected learning in a lecture class with 160 students at the University of Arkansas at Monticello. They found that students who didn’t bring their phones to the classroom scored a full letter-grade higher on a test of the material presented than those who brought their phones. It didn’t matter whether the students who had their phones used them or not: All of them scored equally poorly. A study of 91 secondary schools in the U.K., published last year in the journal Labour Economics, found that when schools ban smartphones, students’ examination scores go up substantially, with the weakest students benefiting the most.
- In a study conducted at the University of Essex in the U.K., 142 participants were divided into pairs and asked to converse in private for 10 minutes. Half talked with a phone in the room, while half had no phone present. The subjects were then given tests of affinity, trust and empathy. “The mere presence of mobile phones,” the researchers reported in 2013 in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, “inhibited the development of interpersonal closeness and trust” and diminished “the extent to which individuals felt empathy and understanding from their partners.” The downsides were strongest when “a personally meaningful topic” was being discussed.
- Google effect: Because search engines are continually available to us, we may often be in a state of not feeling we need to encode the information internally. When we need it, we will look it up.
How Smartphones Hijack Our Minds
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-smartphones-hijack-our-minds-1507307811
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