Apple Inc is celebrating 10 years of being into making and selling of iPhones. This is a long anticipated event, and it is being talked by millions, if not billions of users around the world. Several hidden information about Steve Jobs and Apple, in general, has surfaced on the internet. You can do well to check out 25 Secretes and Stories of Apple and iPhone that became known after 10 years. But in the meantime, let us tell you how iPhone has generally made life worse than good over these 10 years.
1. They are Bad For our Brains: iPhone wasn't designed to be making only phone calls and sending text messages. They can be used to do a variety of things at the same time, like listening to songs, chatting and typing on social media at the same time. And studies/reports have shown that these group of social multi-taskers think more slowly and tends to have worse long-term memory. This is because they (social multi-taskers) find it harder to filter out irrelevant information. Focusing on many things on our phones at once actually, diminishes our cognitive abilities.
2. iPhones Made us Ignore The World Around us: Sherry Turkle, an MIT professor, noted in her book “Alone Together,” “because we're so conditioned to check our phones all the time, many people can no longer appreciate a lake, beach or hike”. iPhones and many things it brought many unpleasantries to the society around us, we've become so distracted with it that we forgot several core values and human principles. Many people now in our society feel more comfortable chatting long hours on the internet than facing their own life issues and sorting them out. “Stillness begets anxiety,”
3. It Made to Ignore One Another so Much: Just like point #2, this is another bad effect iPhone has brought to us. Sherry Turkle, Ph.D., Social Psychologist observed that “we ask less of people and more of technology”. This revelation was led by what she observed while having an interview. Following one of her interviews (sessions) with a college student, Turkle observed her subject check his a lot of times during the session, and he had 100 new messages before the session was completed.
Look around in our today's environment, schools, parties, game centers, the shopping center, the multiplex, on the train platform, and at the Garden, etc., Kids are missing out on the attention they need from parents, who are now constantly distracted on their phones, in vice versa, parents are missing out on what's really going on in their kid(s) lives. As for the rest of us, we lose out on real conversations with our partners while they're checking incoming emails WhatsApp messages, Instagram and Snapchat stories, etc.
4. They Ruined Many Relationships And Marriages: Relationships are now kept on artificial means through the use of social media, and truthfully they are shallow. Most people now feel comfortable to text and have a very long conversation through calling or having one-on-one conversations that could fix a lot of things.
When people text more often than call, they are automatically giving up deeper conversations involving emotions that cannot be conveyed through neither emojis nor emojis LOLs. Social media relationships also tend to be shallow, fueled by likes and quick comments rather than the kinds of private, detailed conversations you would have over coffee or dinner with a close friend, sibling, relative or colleague.
It is advised to re-visit an article by TheAtlantic magazine which states that “people with a higher proportion of online interactions are lonelier than those with more in-person interactions”.
5. They Promote Fear of Missing Out Syndrome (FOMOS): iPhones make it possible to constantly check our social media profiles. Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Snapchat, WeChat, you name. They all come alive whenever we are connected to a data network. Now don't get me, these things are good, the make our lives shinier and merrier.
It gives a great feeling see hundreds and thousands of likes and comments on a photo from a vacation or party or casual hangouts that we uploaded. But research by AgeConsearch has revealed that social media users are more likely to easily compare what they've achieved with that of others. It's easy for people to feel left out and unhappy when measuring the sparkly shots of their friends' best moments against the mundaneness of their own lives.
6. We Have Come to be in Dire Need for Constant Validation: These days, most people constantly check the number of “likes and comments" they get on Facebook and tweets they get on Twitter, and pretty much every other social media, to validate their popularity, wittiness, and worth. Instead of measuring themselves by inner values, integrity, principles, and goals.
Sherry Turkle notes that “in the psychoanalytic tradition, one speaks about narcissism not to indicate people who love themselves, but a personality so fragile that it needs constant support.”
7. We're Expected to be Online and Available 24/7: Many people are now so attached and focused on their iPhones. They would rather starve than to stay offline without the internet for one day. Even when aboard a flight, you are expected to cut off all wireless connections by enabling airplane mode.
Everybody now expects instantaneous responses and replies, else there is going to be a very serious fight and argument if you fail to give a tangible reason why your replies weren't prompt. The most annoying part is that most them wouldn't wanna know where you are at the moment, why you didn't respond at once if it was convenient for you at the moment to reply texts and messages.
You'd be surprised to know that even on once-sacred airline flights, it's now usually possible to connect to Wi-Fi, surf the net, download and even stream online. Now there are fewer and fewer spaces and times when it's possible and appropriate to be offline.
Conclusions.
This article was not intended in any way to demote iPhone or say bad things about the bunch of things Steve Jobs achieved and did when he was alive. Rather it is designed to make us have a rethink of what good they are done and they irreplaceable damages these things have done. iPhone is good, and Apple has made our lives a whole lot easier, shinier and merrier over this past 10 years. But let us look at the ways they have made our lives worse than good.
No comments:
Post a Comment
***We ❤ to hear from you, Tell us Your views and opinion. Please note that comments are always moderated, Abusive comments won't be approved, and spammy comments are deleted automatically