If our fingers were athletes they would win Olympic gold medals. The reason being that they have so much daily excercise scrolling that they would be a cross between Daley Thompson, Carl Lewis and Usain Bolt. The average person in the UK has a smart phone and the average person in the UK spends an extraordinary amount of time looking at it. An inordinate amount of time scrolling for soundbites and visual stimuli. An overwhelming amount of time sending out meaningless words into the ether.
That's not the worst of it though. Living in the moment is a defunct concept. If the phone isn't out held aloft recording the moment then the moment didn't happen. What if a tree fell in the forest and no one was there to film it on their Samsung Galaxy?
There was an eighties TV film called Max Headroom:20 Minutes Into the Future (which spawned the eponimous AI presenter) set in a corporate owned dystopia and one of the marketing tools that was used to sell to the masses was called a 'Blipvert' a new high-speed, concentrated, high-intensity television commercials lasting about three seconds. Their purpose was to prevent the channel-switching that may occur during standard-length commercials, but they had the side-effect of making some viewers explode like those unfortunates in Scanners
We now live in the world of the Blipvert on the much smaller screen via Tik Tok, Snapchat, Reels and other short form video platforms, except people don't run the risk of exploding but the risk imploding mentally.
It seems we are too busy absorbing information to actually diferentiate what is meaningful and process that information for our benefit.
To say that all mobile phone use is negative would be churlish. Good technology should be embraced and utilised in the service of mankind not to promote somene that can put 11 golf balls in their mouth, light their farts, jump over an icy puddle without falling in, or have Bolton's larget collagen lips.
Having just been on holiday in sunnier climes I reintroduced myself to the pleasures of putting my phone away. I read some books, closed my eyes, watched some cats playing, listened to the sound of the sea and people watched. If that sounds boring you aren't doing mobile phone detox right.
To scroll or not to scroll? that is the question. I would like to put things simply. Think to yourself "what do I need to see?" "what do I want to see" and "what don't I need to see?" I think you will find that the answer is staring you in the face.
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having said that;