It might be said that Edison’s creation of the electric light bulb provided the digital technology leading to Smartphones, computers, artificial intelligence, Twitter, Facebook, and all the rest. I was about eight-years-old living in a tin-roofed shack in the woods heated by wood and lighted by a kerosene lamp when electricity reached us.
The light bulb came on. My little brothers and I clapped and shouted with excitement and ran from room to room: “Look! You can see in the corners and everything!”
Shift forward to today. Two teenage boys belonging to a family living in a rural area, next to a lake, a pond, a stream, woodlands, and open meadows, are as pale as if they had never been out in sunlight. I’ve actually only seen them outside doing “boy things” like running and playing perhaps a half-dozen times since they were small. Otherwise, they remain secluded with their digital games and other electronic gadgets.
Now observe general society’s obsession with machines and screens the next time you stop for a Big Mac or to trough out at Golden Corral: Lovers perched silently across from each other trolling for “Likes,” scanning Facebook, checking e-mails, responding to Twitter… Entire families—Mama, Papa (If Papa’s still in the home) and kiddies cocooned into themselves and immersed in their machines. Conversation rarely extends beyond a few simian grunts and gestures. They barely lift their heads to see what they’re eating.
A Kaiser study noted that kids between ages 8-18 each spends an average of eight hours a day glued to a screen. Many of them text over 3,000 times a month.
Other statistics reveal that the regular use of social media machines replaces understanding and comprehension by as much as 40 percent, bolstering the conclusion that networking sites “actively impair performance rather than merely failing to augment learning.”
A Boston developmental specialist working with preschoolers was shocked to find so many homes with few, if any, traditional toys like Legos, coloring books, or action figures. “We had a 30-month-old child,” she reported, “who had no language skills at all until the parents agreed to eliminate TV and IPad.”
One of the great ironies of modern society is that while communications have gone way beyond smoke signals and yodeling across a valley, millions of Americans suffer from epidemic loneliness and are dying “deaths of despair” from suicide, alcohol-related illnesses, and drug ODS at the highest rate in the nation’s history. Since 1999, half the 50 states in the U.S. has recorded a 30-percent increase in suicide rates, with suicide now the leading cause of death for teens. In 2017, 7,000 more Americans committed suicide than died in car accidents…
(To be continued).
Charles W. Sasser is author of more than 60 books and 3,000 magazine articles. His most recent book, which discusses topics such as this one, is Crushing the Collective: America’s Last Chance to Remain Free and Self-Governing.
Great article echoing what I’ve been telling my grandchildren.
Morning, Jim. Good to hear from you–and hope you’re still safe from the hairy green bug lurking in the atmosphere. Jim, I’m working on an article now for WHISTLEBLOWER on how this discarding of real life in exchange for “artificial” s leading to despotism andthe mergng of democracy and communism–as per the democratic presidential nominees finally venturingfrom the shadows to claim the title of “Democratic Socialist)–which, incidentally, was Stalin and Hitler each called himself. Ironic, huh? thank you, Jim. Hope when this is all over I can return to TNW; I miss everyone. chuck sasser
Chuck, I am so glad that you keep sight of wisdom. Keep up what you are doing.
Hey, Jim. thank you for your great comment. And thank you for also supporting the idea that this country is heading for the local trash heap unless we wake up. God bless, old friend. chuck sasser
Another insightful and timely article, Chuck. Given that so many people don’t want to give up their devices or even limit usage, is there a cure? I’ll look forward to the continuation.
Morning, Julie. Always good to hear from you. Antecdote: When my three sons were growing up, before the advent of 24-hour-a day devices, I limited their TV watching to one hour a day. As a result–oldest son is a medical doctor; middle son is a newspaper journalist, and youngest son is a lieutenant withthe Oklahoma Corrections Department. All are big readers of books. I always told them that they would be “participants” in live, not “observers.” It seems to have worked. God bless you, Julie, and please stay safe. Hope to return to TNW after all this–heart surgery, etc., and I’m still working on perhaps getting to the Congo to canoe the river not this summer but the next anyhow. chuck sasser
Whoa! Heart surgery??? Hadn’t heard of this adventure! Praying!
Morning, Sally. Please do pray for me–and for our nation. Months before that cancer surgery in Nov. 2016 (from which surgeon promised I would be fully recovered in 3 weeks–but now it’s been 3 1/2 years and one things leads to another.)–those months before I had climbed tallest mountain in Africa, won Silver Medal ski racing in Colorado, raced mountain bicycles on 2,800 mile race down Rockies from Canada to Mexico, parachuting out of airplanes with WWII Parachute Demo Team–and now, good grief, Charlie Brown, Heart Surgery. . . But I’m working on it! Thank you for your prayers, ol friend. Hopeto be seeing everyone again soon. God bless. chuck sasser