Smart Phones and Dumb People

“I have 423 friends, yet I’m lonely. I speak to all of them everyday, yet none of them really know me.”

These are the striking first words of ‘Look Up’ by writer and director Gary Turk. that is circling the internet at the moment,  made in an attempt to get people to pull away from their smart phones.

The YouTube video had 36,072,175 views at the time of publication, and went viral almost instantly. It has been posted on news sites, websites and has been a constant presence on Facebook’s newsfeed. People have been sharing and re-sharing it on social media networks, making comments like “so very true”, “everyone should watch this” and “the greatest!”.

The video and its theme is ironic though –  it  seems to be doing exactly what it tells us not to do. This video was made in the hope that we would actually experience life and in the hope that we would begin to “give people our love, instead of giving them a like.”

The video emphasises the fact that we now live in “a world where we’re slaves to the technology we mastered, where information gets sold by some rich greedy bastard.” While it is clear the video is definitely being seen, it may not actually be understood. The speech that Gary Turk makes  definitely gets you thinking, but is this enough to actually make people switch of their phones?

Psychology today found that most people – especially youths – are aware of just how dependent they are on their smart phones, but a majority of these people are either addicted or simply unaware of the damaging side effects of using them.

According to a blog on Making Cities Livable International, social media is now the main source of socialization and communication that young people experience. As youths are growing up in a technologically advanced world, they are not developing proper social skills. If young people are not getting the attention that they require from their friends or family, they are turning to social media to seek this attention. However, “interacting with an iPhone or laptop may provide social nourishment that is as unhealthy as fast food.”

In an effort to try and distance ourselves from the typical phone dependent youth stereotype, young football player Jordan Iudica, 20, university student Scott Ritchie, 22, and I went four days without accessing any form of social media. We each had different reasons to take a break from social networking and all of us had different experiences.

In the four social media free days we all began to see how you can live a life without depending on Facebook.  As soon as the four days were up, every one of us was back on the site almost immediately, proving what an addiction we have all developed. Whilst Jordan stated that not being on social media felt “rather freeing,” he did also say that he felt “disconnected from the outside world.”

Whilst my social media was switched off, I felt that I began to actually experience real-life properly. When I was watching TV, I was actually watching it rather than it just being on for background noise. I found that if I wanted to wish someone a happy birthday, I actually had to call or text them, and not just write on their Facebook wall. I found that if I was waiting in a line for something, I was actually engaging with the world around me, rather than just using the time as an excuse to check my Facebook news feed.

Although I did begin to enjoy the benefits of a social media free lifestyle, I believe that in my life, there are more positives to being connected on social media than negatives.

Whilst this video has definitely had an impact and made many people aware to the fact that they are addicted to social media, it is unrealistic to think that a video is  a strong enough source to make people get off their phone. As the video states, “we’re a generation of idiots, smart phones and dumb people.”

By Holly Rourke