I don't have a smartphone anymore.
It’s been over a year now. And I miss nothing. I can tell you now for sure that they are a total waste of time, and even more so, a waste of your life.
Just recently I was struck by a photo I took in a theme park in southern China a mere 7 years ago. The other day I looked at it again and thought to myself ’hey that is so nice, people look so relaxed and happy here; they savor the moment; I wanna go!’
Well… that was before the smartphone pandemic hit. The world and society have turned upside down since then, and that retro-romantic energy on the photo might have long faded away, in fact, that place might be unrecognizable. So I decided to fly back to that very same Chinese theme park, just to take a picture again, of the exact same spot, 7 years later.
The picture below tells its own tale.
Claiming that smartphones facilitate human interaction is like saying slot machines facilitate wealth creation or cigarettes promote relaxation. I don’t dwell on nostalgia, I am pro-progress, love the internet and look forward to space travel – bring it on! But gadget addiction is not progress, and this can't be the future. This pandemic of smartphone overuse is a menace of epic proportions that turns otherwise happy, healthy people into drowsy, distracted shadows of their true selves. I would even go as far as to say that our collective mental health is at stake here.
I really hope that in 15 years from now jokes will be made about how smartphones made us more 'social and connected' in the 2nd decade of the 21st century.
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