When Jack and I lived in a small town in Virginia, we routinely drove in and out of Richmond and Charlottesville (50 miles and 35 miles respectively) for grocery shopping, plays, dinner, work, etc. and never gave a thought that we were driving those distances on two-lane country roads WITHOUT A DARN CELL PHONE. In fact, there weren’t any cell phones back then. Sure, the thought of breaking down crossed my mind, but houses weren’t spaced out too far, and I just figured I’d walk to one of them and call for help. Now that I have a cell phone? I can’t drive half a mile from home without panicking if I discover I’ve forgotten the phone. I’ve turned into a phone wuss, and I’m not proud of it.
For the longest time, I had a flip phone, long after 
smart phones were out. “You have the oldest phone of anyone I know,” a friend once told me. I smacked the lid down on the screen and said, “I use my phone for making calls. I don’t need all that stuff that comes on smart phones.” Sigh. Or for the naivete! Of course, as soon as I got a smart phone I set up weather, Google, a news app, and Solitaire. I am picking the phone up a hundred times a day to do something on it that doesn’t involve making a call.
I am happy to say that I don’t keep my phone with
me all the time. I’m not stuck to it. But every time I’m in one room and an alarm goes off or I receive a call on the phone in a different room, I curse the fact that I don’t have it stuck to me. My, how the mighty have fallen.
What about you? Are you a slave to your phone?
Read the next blog in the blog hop by going here.
Burning Bridges by Anne Krist
One Woman Only
Only a Good Man Will Do
Naval Maneuvers
Nope, no phone-slave here. I’ve told students in high school classes I’m subbing in, that I’ve forgotten my phone that day. One girl looked at me in horror, telling me she’d sooner forget her pants, than her phone. It’s an addiction. I’ve read that the instant gratification from constantly being in touch with various social medias acts like dopamine in the brain. It’s particularly acute for teens–those with developing brains. Psychologists call if “FOMO syndrome”, for Fear Of Missing Out. So taking away a kid’s phone is even worse than grounding them these days. Wow.
That’s so interesting! When I was teaching, cell phones were almost nonexistent and I was happier for it. I do remember telling a kid once that the next time his cell phone rang it would go into a bucket of water…