The DUMB “smart phone”

We call it a “smart phone” but in many ways, if we don’t control the use of it and who can have one– it can be one of the dumbest things we’re involved with. I mean this blog to be an alert and I might even develop this into a full sermon on this site. Should children and teens have “smart phones”?

Sure, it’s great having a little phone that is so great that most people have now cancelled their land line phones. These “Smart phone” we each have is:

*** Also is a portable powerful computer with computing power that used to take a room full of big machinery and spinning reels. Good news:  it allows us quick access to so many things.  Bad news:  it allows quick access to so many things – even for your children and teens when they use their smart phone.

***Sure it’s great that these phones that even children now have are also high quality cameras and movie cameras.

***It’s a flashlight. It’s a compass.  It can show us details of someone’s street anywhere in the world. It’s capable of games and videos. We can learn how to play chess better (as I learned when my grandson beat me for the first – and then a second time.  HE’S been practicing.)  We can look at the night sky and find and identify planets, stars and constellations. We can learn to cook, learn to paint, learn to – just about anything.  We can view just about anything as well.  We can access any song ever written and hear it blare out or blare into our ear pieces, and some play it so loudly into their ears that we now know many will go prematurely deaf or suffer tinnitus later.

***And we can communicate as never before – and send e-mails with it. And of course now we also get a lot of JUNK email, just like the old fashioned post office junk mail.  We can text people around the world with it. We can go on Facebook and see what our family and friends are up to and enjoy their latest photos. We can instantly export pictures of anything and anyone we want all over the world in a split second.  Stock trading and investment planning is easy with a smart phone. You can learn new languages more easily with it.  You all know I could go on for pages on what the Smart phone has done for us.   Young people today wonder how we ever survived without it! Wow, you had to put money into a “pay phone” to call someone? 

            So there’s a lot to like about smart phones, so don’t get me wrong. 

            But it also can ruin your present and future life.

So WHY would I call this piece of absolute marvel – a DUMB and even dangerous phone?

Please click on “Continue reading” to see the answer and I hope it will make us all think about the dangerous consequences of the smart phone too, if we don’t curtail how we use it.  I’m talking about dangers so great it can affect our future, our reward in the kingdom and much more. 

OK, so how can the smart phone be such a dumb phone?

It’s ironic. It allows us to interact with far more people, instantly, than ever before, and yet so many are feeling more alone than ever before. Why?  I’m concerned with the younger generation (anyone younger than I am).

Do we know how to converse – in voice – anymore, speaking to and listening to one another, in front of each other, with facial expressions and vocal tones? 

I was watching a group of school teens walking home – and I could find NO ONE talking to anyone beside them. NO ONE.  They all were transfixed with their cell phone messages, Facebook, Instagram pictures, emails and what not – and nobody was talking. 

We’re losing the ability to just TALK and just LISTEN to one another.  I’ve had many grandparents complain that their grandkids never CALL anymore. They text – and in short 2-5 word clips.  They don’t seem to understand the need for their grandparents and older people – to just let them hear their voices.

It’s a DUMB phone when not controlled because it’s depersonalizing us. 

Young people are forgetting the beauty of – QUIET.  Can someone (again, especially the young) just go for a walk in silence anymore – without their cell phone, or weed their garden in silence and just meditate, just let the moment envelope them?

Smart phones are being used to bully teens and children – en masse – in large groups, instantly.  Photos are added. Information is given. Within seconds the vilest things said and depicted can be sent to thousands – about your child or about you. Some recent stories on the news reveal some bullied children even ended their lives – because, ultimately, of smart phones being used for very evil purposes.

Within seconds, children with these kinds of phones can access the most detailed and graphic pornography – going way beyond mere nudity, to actual sex acts, including hetero and homosexual sex acts, and even bestiality and worse.  On Laura Ingraham’s TV news show, she recently had two psychiatrists who said much of their practice is working now with children as young as 10 and 12, boys and girls, addicted to porn.  Some older teens 18 and over – are serving jail time because of what they’ve said and sent to minors, perhaps to a girl friend who was only 14 or 15, just a few years younger.  But they were accused and convicted of sending porn to a minor. 

So should you be letting your children and teens have these phones?  You can still find old “flip phones” that are not “smart phones” if you want them to have the ability to call out in emergencies and what not.

Access to computers also gives children and adults access to many video games, many of which are very explicit sexually and many get you involved in graphic violence. I believe these desensitize those who indulge in them so it means nothing to blow someone’s head off with their high powered e-gear, or to rip someone’s heart out or to rape or do other horrible acts – as these often can be part of the “game”.   In fact, the trend is to get into virtual sex as well, so you don’t need a real flesh and blood partner anymore.  I don’t understand this last part – but it’s apparently out there or coming soon.

PEOPLE are LOSING INHIBITIONS and right to privacy – as apps request your permission to access your phone’s pictures and photos, data, contacts and who know what else – and BILLIONS of people around the world, yes billions, are giving up all of that to the unknown robots that now can peer into your very personal life.  What do they do with that?  They share it with marketers around the world. So if you do a Search on a particular city, or search for cruises –you’re soon bombarded with ads about cruise lines and things to do in a certain city. How did they all know so quickly? 

The “cookies” and other things they have – often with your permission -- are sold to marketers, so now the whole world knows where you are or where you’re going, or that you’re away from home, or what you like, how old you are, your shopping habits, where you went to school, where you live, what your children look like, and who you’re with, etc., etc. 

So personally, I don’t give permission for various apps to have access to my data, photos, contacts and the many things they want from me, so I can use their app.  I don’t think that’s worth the risk to me.  Have YOU thought that through? 

I could go on and on.  I just want my readers to give thought to how you use these marvelous tools of technology and don’t forget to be human and to remember what counts most: your relationships.  Talk to them – live, by voice. Experience one another – for real.  GUARD the doors to your mind and refuse to use the phone for violent and sexual games, pornography and anything ungodly. And watch the TIME you’re putting into these phones.

Life is made up of time and how we use that time. Though these phones can save an enormous amount of time when rightly used, they can also use up your life, your time, and distract you from what you should be focused on right now. I’d like to see a study showing how much time people use daily on their phones – texting, reading emails, doing Facebook and Instagram etc , even while at work.   I often don’t even have my cell phone with me – on purpose – so I can really focus on what I’m doing right now.  You can be video recording an event so much that you miss the fuller experience of just putting the phone/camera down and relishing the full experience.

And no, I would NOT want my teens and children have a full-fledged smart phone yet. I’d give them a phone, but not one with computer abilities.  It’s just too dangerous and can ruin someone’s life for the rest of their lives. That’s not worth it. 

So USE your smart phone carefully.  And realize marketers and industry want all your data you’ll give them – before they spread it to anyone willing to pay for it. Don’t.  Don’t regret later what you give up today.

And don’t let your smart phone become your dumb phone – or allow it to ruin your life or the lives of the young ones in your family.