The constant availability promised by smartphones may have reduced worrying when something unusual happens, but that's been replaced with something much worse: the constant expectation of being available at all times, coupled with the anxiety induced by even very short periods of unavailability. — AP
About 25 years ago, my family was vacationing in New Jersey, and my dad and I went golfing. On the way to the course, the car started acting up – the battery was dying. This was before the days of smartphones, so we relied on highway signage and good fortune to limp to a garage.
It was the alternator, and after a couple hours we got back on the road to the golf course, played nine holes and returned to Cape May. But it wasn't just before the era of smartphones. It was before the wide adoption of any mobile phones, and we didn't have one with us. Our unplanned multi-hour delay had left my mom distraught, to the point where she was calling local hospitals to see if a car accident had occurred.
This kind of uncertainty about the activities and whereabouts of people not immediately visible to us is all but extinct. Today, everyone is presumed to be discoverable and available all the time.
We feel incomplete and vulnerable without our device, or if its battery dies. (I know I do, and I don't like that I do.) Parents use location-sharing to constantly monitor their children's whereabouts.
And, not despite all this but because of it, we're all more anxious than ever.
Co-dependency
By now it's settled that smartphones cause more disruptions in schools than they provide benefits. What isn't discussed enough is who is causing the disruption. Most of the time, teachers say, it isn't kids texting their friends: It's parents texting their kids.
A recent study by something called the National Parents Union revealed that among the distressingly large majority of parents who favour smartphones in schools, nearly half cite a desire "to communicate about (their child's) mental health or other needs during the day."
It's been nearly two decades since I was in high school, but I can say with absolute conviction that nothing would have been worse for my "mental health," and for my maturation into an independent young adult, than constant communication with either or both of my parents throughout the school day.
And I really like my parents.
What this enforces, it doesn't take a crack psychologist to figure out, is mutually stultifying co-dependency. The child is simultaneously deprived of the ability to develop their own emotional management strategies and forced to participate in their own parents' emotional management. The parents, meanwhile, remain constantly tethered to and psychologically dependent on the wildly fluctuating mental state of their teen or pre-teen child.
For parents, smartphones mean they could be in touch with their children at any time, and so they feel they should. But it would be so much better if they couldn't, because they shouldn't.
It's the same for all of us. We should be much more comfortable with ourselves, and others, being out of touch.
Never alone, always lonely
The constant availability promised by smartphones may have reduced worrying when something unusual happens, but that's been replaced with something much worse: the constant expectation of being available at all times, coupled with the anxiety induced by even very short periods of unavailability.
It's warping our children's brains, and our own. It's not the way human beings are meant to live. Uncertainty about others – including our loved ones, and especially our children – is part of life, just as surely as independence is. And so, therefore, is learning how to manage our relationships with uncertainty, with risk, with fear.
Back in New Jersey, my dad could have – and, as my mom made absolutely clear, should have – used the mechanic's phone to try to reach her. But this just goes to show that the pre-cellphone world wasn't actually one of constant anxiety and dread. It just took a little more creativity to keep in touch, and required a lot more patience with not being in touch.
This episode occurred at an inflection point, when the old habits weren't yet gone but new expectations were forming. Not knowing, and being at peace with not knowing, used to be the norm. Around the turn of the millennium, that began changing. And now we know everything about everyone, or least could know everything about everyone, all the time.
So we're never alone, even as we're lonelier than ever.
Choosing peace
There's no technical solution, because smartphones are simply necessary for most people in most states of life. There's only our choosing to leave others alone, and allowing ourselves to be left alone.
And you'll find – as my wife and I have found, as we give our own children the freedom to explore our neighbourhood and to visit friends without any means, other than landline phones, to communicate with them – that it's not so bad. In fact, it's ok. In fact, it's good.
The extreme anxiety we feel at not knowing what's going on? It's not natural, but a habit formed by our choices. When we make different choices, the feeling fades.
And it's replaced by something our constant availability has stolen from us: peace. – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette/Tribune News Service
