Cellphones and tablets are interesting devices from a psychological perspective. There have been studies and articles written showing that the "reward" we get from a "like", a text, a tweet, et al, is comparable to a drug. The reward center in our brain becomes "addicted" to this influx of internal "drug". Have you noticed that a lot of people "can't" put their phone down? (can't is in quotes as obviously they CAN do it, but chose not to) Even when in front of someone they care a great deal about or an important person for their success, their phone seems to dominate their attention. HR managers now complain that some people can't seem to put their phone down during interviews. A major complaint on dating sites is that the other person is spending too much time with their phone versus actively engaging with their date.
Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Reddit, Pinterest, and the rest of what I call ANTI-social media are one of the biggest grabbers of attention. Going back to the reward center thing, getting the responses and positive feedback is gratifying enough that people gravitate to these sources as opposed to the person sitting across from them. The anonymity of the screen is one part of it. Getting tens, hundreds, or even thousands of approvals is much more of a motivator than the possibility of one approval from the person we are with.
I know I come off as an old man (and I guess by some standards - I AM!) but I do wonder what all this instant gratification, anonymity, and ability to connect with people without personal contact or true communication is doing to our ability and even our desire for true interaction and discourse. I also wonder why some are more interested in communicating with distant others instead of those sitting in the same room with them. It is only in the past twenty years or so that the cellphone networks have become widespread and reliable enough that we can accept calls, texts, and messages instantly from almost anywhere we are. It now seems people feel it is critical to handle what is coming in over their phone with no regard to the people they are with.
I also wonder wonder what the phone and tablet are doing to our children. The reward centers are being stimulated in ways we as a species have never had young developing brains exposed to in our history. That these young brains are being rewired is a given. As to the effects on the personality and the brain function in the future, we are going to have to wait. This is a huge experiment that is being performed on a large portion of our next generation. Then, when you look at the fact that these devices are surrogate parents in a lot of cases and parents are paying more attention to their phones over their children, I wonder what that is doing to social development as well. (as an aside, this post was somewhat motivated by a lunch I had this past weekend - at the restaurant I was at there were many parents and children. Very, very few of the parents interacted with their children even a fraction of the time they devoted to their phones.)
Sorry, I have to check my phone. It just beeped at me...
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