Smartphones, the new “don’t sit too close to the television”

Published 7:00 am Friday, February 23, 2018

As a society, we’ve only had devices that connect us to the world for a little more than a century.

In the early 1900s radio was the new hit thing. While it didn’t have moving pictures, or even very much selection, it was a way to catch up on recent events, hear the latest songs and maybe hear a fictional story or two.

Radio would eventually pave the way for television, which brought moving images that would later be displayed in color. It was then that viewers could see and hear the information being shared, but selection was still limited

Sign up for our daily email newsletter

Get the latest news sent to your inbox

With the invention of the Internet, radio and television were combined with the plethora of information contained in nearly every library across the world. Today, cellphones are essentially a combination of all of the technological achievements of our time rolled into one.

So, is it any wonder that we find ourselves glued to their screens at any given time?

And while that access can be beneficial, it would appear that parents are concerned with how much time their children spend looking at their smartphone.

According to an article published by USA Today, a poll of adults with teenage children found that they are more concerned with how much time their teens spend on a cellphone than their own.

It’s understandable that adults are more concerned with their children’s well being than their own. That’s just part of the human condition. However, it’s interesting that parents are concerned at all with their child’s use of a device since they are the ones that provided them with the smartphone.

Parents who are concerned about how much of their child’s day is spent looking at a screen as opposed to interacting with people in the real world, have an easy fix; eliminate one more bill a month by cutting that service.