I have come to recognize the walking style of some people as I walk behind them. This often reminds me of the Ministry of Silly Walks sketch from the infamous Monty Python, watch this before you read on.

Often times I get off a bus or a tram to get to work and right then someone in front of me moves in a slow, aimless, unfocused manner, sometimes even across the pedestrian walk, where vehicles are waiting to drive on but can’t until this individual passes; they are often gazing at an almost 45-degree angle downward and unaware that other people actually exist around them. I am forced to do an overtaking maneuver and as I pass this individual I notice that s/ he is staring into her/ his mobile phone. This is what I call the Smartphone Stomp. Just this week, one of my older patients was walking through the city in the shadow of buildings, to avoid the strong sunlight and she informed me that she nearly got stomped over by 2 people looking into their mobile phones, also walking in the shade so that they could look into their devices while walking. Smartphone Stomp – the walk a person engages in when s/he is looking into their mobile phone irrespective of others around them, possibly walking into others or stopping traffic for no apparent reason other than not being present in this reality. Maybe Monty Python had the ability to look into the future in 1970, to be able to foresee that society in the 2020s would be dealing with this theme of silly walks.

Then of course there are the other ones riding a bicycle or an e-bike, scooter or car while looking into their mobile phones – the ones with a death wish but unaware of it. Talk about taking risks; risking your own life and the life of others in order to stay on your mobile phone. Why would one do this? It would be a sad way to leave the world; falling into a hole or getting driven over by a car as one was too busy staying in touch on social media or news on the mobile phone, which somehow couldn’t wait till we got to a safer place. What have we become? Slaves to a digital object that dictates we stay on it all of our waking hours and some.

When they named it a smartphone, did they mean we would become smarter if we used it, or did they mean the smartphone would become smarter while we became stupid-er? From what I have observed, I believe it to be the latter. Even I, who try not to use my mobile device often and most definitely not staring into it while I am walking, am starting to feel the effect it has on my ability to memorize things. In fact there have been recent studies conducted that have shown that the smartphone effects a deficiency in memory and learning just by its mere presence in the room. This object somehow distracts, makes us lazy and by the looks of it on the street, stupid.

We, humans of the modern world, have to get a grip on things and take back our intelligence and our attention. It’s time to hold ourselves accountable for our actions, as well as Big Tech that makes these devices and content to keep people glued to it 24/7. It’s time to wake up from the lull of smartphone distractions, become present with ourselves and the people as well as the environment around us. I was just informed by my partner that there is a rise in the use of the “dumbphone,” those mobile phones without a touchscreen. If it means we take back our intelligence and our common sense, then so be it.
 
 
 

Image by Pete Linforth on Pixabay

As a teenager, I remember observing my mom and her news consumption. She would walk out in the morning to get her newspaper, then read it through the day, clipping articles that she felt were interesting to keep. Then, every hour she turned on the radio to listen to the hourly news bulletin while still reading her newspaper. Then when the news broadcast appeared on the TV, she would turn that on too. She was what we would define today as a "news junkie," an addict of news and she is not alone. In fact, we, the humans living in this time and space of 2021, have become a society of news junkies. 
 
We in the modern world have perfected the art of receiving news by introducing TV news networks that play 24-hour news with second-to-second updates moving below the screen, the internet, push notification on our mobiles phone for the newest, most important news of the minute right at the tip of our fingers, delivered directly to us. I get to the tram station and there is a dispenser for a free newspaper, which many do not think twice to take along to read and leave on the seat of the tram as a service to the next person. I sit on the tram and I am bombarded by the news on a screen, which is extremely hard to avoid because it's right next to the screen displaying the next tram stop. I, like many in our society, was taught to stay informed of the news, as it meant that you were a well-read, aware, educated individual. But is this really true?
 
I believe that one of the questions should not be "what" is the news but "how" is this news. Over the years, I realized that the news being broadcasted/ published has become increasingly negative and bleak, about some event like an earthquake in some part of the world that I have never been to or a plane crash that killed a whole lot of people. If you know how many earthquakes occur in a day, which according the US Geological Survey happens 50 times a day, or that the number of commercial plane crashes in a year in the world is between 0-2. I ask myself sometimes why we don't hear of the thousands of flights daily that landed safely and didn't crash, as well as the information that earthquakes happen on a regular basis because our Earth is a living entity. How is my knowing of this event going to change anything? Many of us just read, listen, watch and do nothing about it except maybe to feel a little depressed or fearful for a moment until the next tragedy occurs. Who defines what news should be? This is where I question the intentions of news providers. Are they reporting this news because they have a genuine intent to aid society or living beings or is it just gaining profit by provoking some sort of emotional reaction in us through sensationalize information reporting? When I consider the "why" I am being provided with a free newspaper at my tram station every weekday morning, I observe that the paper is in fact NOT FREE, as it is filled with advertisements paid for by companies wanting to sell something to the readers. When we get news on the internet or push service, our data is being collected, possibly sold, to companies that are once again trying to sell or get something out of us. We are not benefitting from these but being sapped of our time, energy, attention and mental health.
 
What can we do so that we are getting news that we need and want? We have to be mindful and to search for it ourselves, if we want to. We will need to stop consuming the "media diarrhea" that is being projected on us.  As neuroscientist Beau Lotto describes,
 
"While we still know very little about attention [...], it seems that the power of attention is not in doing the looking but in the ability to stop looking..., to look away, to move your eyes to the less obvious, to stop a cycle of thoughts and perception. (Lotto, 2017, 264)
 
We can consciously look away and fill our space of attention with thoughts and ideas that we ourselves deem important. If you are really in need of news, historian Rutger Bregman suggests:
 
"My rule of thumb? I have several: steer clear of television news and push notifications and instead read a more nuanced Sunday paper and in-depth feature writing, whether online or off. Disengage from your screen and meet real people in the flesh. Think as carefully about what information you feed your mind as you do about the food you feed your body." (Bregman, 2020, 392) 
 
  

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Reference
Bregman, Rutger (2020): Humankind - A Hopeful History. London: Bloomsbury Publishing
 
Lotto, Beau (2017): Deviate - The Creative Power of Transforming your Perception. London: Orion Publishing
 
 
 
 
Image by _Alicja_ on Pixabay