Ever since I acquired my cell phone, I have noticed how much it consumes the attention of everyone who has one.  I didn’t want a phone.  But as time went on, I felt the need to be more easily available to my family, especially my grandchildren and mother.  I would forget it at home regularly, and that would be a source of frustration to me.  I wasn’t attached to it at all in those days.  

More and more, I felt the need to have it so that other people could get ahold of me as well.  So now, I only occasionally leave it at home when I am out.  But I find that I do become more distracted when it is with me.

Working in a public high school, I witnessed cell phone addiction.  Young people who have always been around cell phones, think that they are a life necessity.  Therein lies the problem. There is now more than one generation of people who are addicted to distractions. The cell phone is just one example.  Everywhere one goes, people are engrossed in “things.”  I admit it, that when I get on my computer, I lose track of time because the distraction has an almost mesmerizing effect.  Distractions are attractive and powerful.

When we become distracted by things for excessive amounts of time, our ability to connect with each other suffers.  Cell phones are the most ubiquitous example, but there are many others. In restaurants, huge television sets with sports and news and music fill the air with multifaceted noise, making it difficult to have simple conversation.  You can forget about having a deep discussion in these places.

However, there is still a need in human beings to connect with one another.  Distractions are just obstacles to this.  They can be controlled.  Unfortunately, the desire to do so is suppressed by these tempting, time-consumers.  Of most concern to me, is the moments that we are missing, simply by being cut off from what is going on around us.  In these blocks of time, where we are not fully present, might something happen just around the corner or out of earshot that was more important than the distraction in which we were immersed?  I fear that this happens all too often.  How would we know?

These are just random thoughts about something I have observed and thought about a lot.  If people who are concerned about these issues put their heads together, who knows what creative ideas could come about?  Want to talk about it?