I met a new friend recently who made cell phones. His company made smart phones, I don’t remember which ones, but lots of the ones that aren’t the I-phones. He was brilliant to talk to, and socially conscious, too. What I mean is, he actually spent time wondering what his products were doing to the social landscape, how the creation of a particular phone changed the way people lived their lives. And he wondered whether people’s lives were changed for the better, honestly.
We talked about how, in the automotive industry, all sorts of regulations were in place to make sure people were safe. Seatbelts and airbags and crash-safe frames are all regulated by the government, but when it comes to social wrecks, emotional crashes and that sort of thing, we hardly give any thought to the products we buy.
The truth is, our children’s generation will grow up believing we loved our phones more than we loved them. It will be the battle cry of rebellion, that their parents were too busy checking facebook on their phones to pay any attention to them. I can see an entire movement of kids who don’t want phones because they represent neglect.
So my new friend and I actually joked about putting warning labels on products. Sort of like Surgeon General’s warnings on cigarettes. Can you imagine if your cell phone came with a warning label? What do you think it would say?
This device may lead you to invest in fake relationships to the exclusion of actual human contact.
This device may cause social anxiety because nobody has @replied you on twitter
This device may……
Any other warnings?
How about if you show your children that a cell phone is not necessary by not even owning one, telling them that they indeed cause brain cancer as is listed in the “warning” on the little instruction manual that comes with everyone’s phone, and teach them to be an individual by not following the norm.
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