A generation that is addicted to their smartphones
May 21, 2015, 5:37 AM | Updated: 8:52 am
(AP)
It should be clear by now that we have among us a generation of smartphone addicts. Their brain chemistry compels them to broadcast the play-by-play of their daily lives to everyone they know and a fair number of people they don’t know.
It’s wrong for people like me to judge them because number one, they were born that way, and number two, my generation was responsible for raising them.
The cupholder in our cars is now a phone holder.
So the question now becomes: how do we prevent them from crossing into our lane and killing us?
Because the anti-smartphone laws have failed. We know this because states keep passing new ones, which they wouldn’t be doing if the old ones worked.
It’s not just that they’re texting while driving. They’re Instagramming, Snapchatting, Tweeting and above all, Facebooking.
They try to resist. But if the red light is too long, or the traffic is too slow, there’s the phone beckoning from the cup holder — “take me, hold me. Your Facebook friends have a food picture for you.”
Maybe it’s our fault — those of us on the radio. Maybe if we whispered to you more often, the phone wouldn’t be as tempting.
The only solution I can think of at this point would be mittens. Everyone under 40 gets mandatory driving mittens at least until the self-driving car is perfected.
I’ll tell you what convinced me to put the phone down; those 34 million cars with airbags that are like a little bomb in your steering wheel. Think about it. If your phone is between you and the wheel when that thing goes off? Facebook gets a whole new meaning.