by Andy Rementer @ TechnoTuesday.com
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Posts tagged as:
cell phones
A Google image search for texting while driving will turn up some pictures that will give you nightmares. If your kids text while driving, you might want to show those pictures to them. I am not inclined to link to them here because… they are gross.
But if it makes your texting teen rethink updating their Twitter while driving, then perhaps let them see what can happen.
A lot of adults aren’t any brighter than careless teens.
“My job has me out on the road for four to five days out of the week,” Anthony Perry, a director of business development for a Washington-based health care research firm, told CNN in an e-mail sent from his BlackBerry. “I don’t particularly think I am that good at texting while driving but I do it anyway, recognizing the risks.”
I don’t think he actually does recognize the risks. Mr. Perry, please have a look at those images I mentioned above. Only then can you say that you recognize the risks.
More stupidity follows:
Nevertheless, for many in business, it seems to be a matter of competitive survival.
“Now with e-mail and with the advent of the BlackBerries and hyper-accessibility, there’s this sense that if you don’t show that you’re always prepared and ready to respond and address an issue, then somehow you’re going to be perceived as not being conscientious or not keeping up on things,” said Tom Britt, a professor of social psychology at Clemson University in South Carolina.
“I could not imagine doing my job, or living my life, without the aid of a bberry,” Perry wrote. “I don’t know many who could who are in my line of work.”
In the context of an article about the modern workplace, devices and connectivity, that kind of attitude wouldn’t raise an eyebrow. But this is from this article about texting while driving. Are people seriously justifying the need to text while driving? Work demands are forcing you to put your life in great peril? Really? Or do you think that you’re that important (not to mention, indestructible)?
Mr. Perry. You only get once chance to become fatally distracted. Do that Google image search mentioned above. You’re job isn’t important enough to risk your own life or the lives of others.
Sending that message can’t possibly be that important. If it is, then it’s important enough to justify pulling over for a minute.
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Who do you think has anxiety the most from kids having to unplug from their devices when they go to summer camp for two weeks? The kids? Or Mom or Dad?
In some cases, both.
Having gone through an Internet connectivity outage that went on for over twenty four hours, I can understand what it is like to feel unable to communicate via email, keep up with the outside world, and get work done. I work from home. So my Internet connection is important to me. I experienced significant frustration, a feeling of helplessness, perhaps some anxiety. But within a few hours, I realized that I would survive and that my connectivity would be restored at some point, and then I was able to move on to enjoy my forced vacation from being online.
Sounds like the kids who experienced the forced disconnection from tech at summer camp go through the same thing. But they do survive and quickly find out that their time can be filled with enjoyable things to do with other people. And many find that they even don’t miss their connectivity.
But the helicopter parents mentioned in the article appear to be the most anxious ones. Gasp! They can’t be in constant contact with their kids! And what is their reaction? Fear! The idea that their kids can’t pick up after a couple of rings to reassure them that they are safe makes Mom really uneasy… Does Mom resolve to let go and just get a grip? No. Instead she reassures herself that she can bug the camp counselors frequently to check in on her kid.
And what do the camp counselors have to do to fend off the barrage of worrisome parents constantly calling? They have to reassure parents that their kids are still alive by posting photos of them on an online gallery. Oh brother.
When I was a kid, my parents dropped me off for two weeks at camp, and then hopped on a ship to the Bahamas for at least a week if not longer. There was no way that either of us could get in touch with each other even if there was some kind of emergency. Maybe some kind of telegram could have been sent to let them know that I was eaten by a bear. But I have a feeling that my parents would have rather waited to hear about that when they got home. Why spoil a fun vacation in the Caribbean with news of my unfortunate death?
[photo by Symic]
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Photo by Jakub Hlavaty
Another great reason why kids should spend more time face-to-face.
Cellphone use in kids linked to brain tumours
“What stands out is the consistency of the association of exposure and disease. The evidence, as I see it, is sufficiently strong that there needs to be public warnings, there needs to be establishments of exposure guidelines and that the present guidelines — in Canada, the United States or anyone else — are not protective of human health.
“I see us facing a major problem in the future because of the fact that young children are on cellphones constantly, and we may be setting ourselves up for an epidemic of brain cancer, the same thing we did with cigarette smoking and lung cancer.”
According to Columbia University physiology professor Martin Blank, who edited the special issue, the laboratory studies “point to significant interactions” of both power frequency and radio frequency with cellular components, especially DNA.
The epidemiological studies “point to increased risk” of developing certain cancers associated with long-term exposure to radio frequency, he said.
Learned about this story through Tina Su’s Tweet. Thanks for that link Tina!
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14,528 text messages in one month. The online AT&T statement ran 440 pages.
“First, I laughed. I thought, ‘That’s insane, that’s impossible,’ ” the 45-year-old dad said. “And I immediately whipped out the calculator to see if it was humanly possible.”
He found it was – barely.
It works out to 484 text messages a day, or one every two minutes of every waking hour.
It’s definitely good that they had the $30 unlimited texting plan, because a friend of mind did not, and his daughter did manage to run about about $1200 (across a couple of months as I recall).
With fingers like hers, I would remove the cell phone from her hands, and put a violin in it’s place.
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