‘Fingertip functionality’
I’ll be the first to admit that mobile technology has delivered the convenience of ‘fingertip functionality’ in spades.
In just a few clicks we can pinpoint exactly where we are in the world, send an instant message to family or friends, look up a restaurant menu, hail a taxi, order groceries, translate a sign in a foreign language, and the list goes on.
Great, yes … but it’s not all champagne and roses!
The ‘heads-down’ culture
Social media and gaming platforms have jumped at the opportunity to harness the convenience of mobile technology to render their frighteningly addictive offerings ubiquitous.
It is this combination of mobile technology and social media that is the primary driver of what I call the ‘heads-down’ culture that has recently emerged among people of all walks of life, but particularly the younger generation who have never been exposed to another way.
Not long ago I grabbed the arm of a heads-down young friend, who I was walking with, and yanked them out of the path of a speeding electric scooter.
Window on the world
An interesting discussion ensued about the habitual tendency of many nowadays to walk everywhere while transfixed by their mobile phone screens.
“It gives us instant connectivity to, and an instant window on, the world around us,” argued my friend.
There is an obvious attraction to this but like anything in life, too much of a good thing becomes a bad thing.
I imagined someone with a fascination for the wider universe peering continuously through the tiny eyepiece of a giant telescope. No matter how wondrous the sights that the telescope might reveal, never looking away would seriously distort one’s perspective of the world that exists under one’s feet!
FOMO and discomfort
Of course, if you become so used to, and immersed in, the view afforded by the telescope, taking time out to survey your local environment might mean missing out on a new development in the wider universe!
Not only that, but dealing with the all too real but ‘unfamiliar’ local environment might leave you feeling a little uncomfortable or even scared!
And this combination of FOMO in the digital world, and general discomfort with the physical world, goes directly to the heart of the reason why the heads-down culture is becoming so prevalent.
Look around you and observe
Next time you find yourself in a coffee shop, restaurant, or anywhere designed for physical socialising, or bringing people together, look around you.
Take time to observe the shocking degree to which people choose to go heads-down, immersing themselves in their comfortable digital worlds, rather than interacting with the real world around them.
We humans were not designed to restrict our focus to such tiny screens for such lengthy periods. Our mental health – not to mention our eyes and other sensory organs – is dependent on the varied and authentic stimulation that nature, our surroundings, and other people, have to offer.
Determination and courage needed
It takes both determination and courage to swim against the tide and try to break, or at least seriously curtail, the heads-down habit.
After all, powerful vested marketing interests are hard at work to keep people mesmerised by their mobile device screens. They operate by engaging our imaginations, appealing to our egos, and playing to our FOMO.
But for those who can recognise the heads-down culture for what it is – and the toxic effect it can have on physical and social health in the longer-term – there is much to gain by choosing to live heads-up whenever practical.
Nature, and the physical world, has so much more to offer us than the convenient and enticing, yet misleading, one-dimensional, ego-driven, digital world.
Great new life loading
If you are bold enough to admit to a heads-down addiction, try an experiment.
Go heads-up for two weeks. During that period, take time to carefully study the heads-down crowd around you and their general obliviousness to the people and environment around them.
Then decide for yourself who and what is truly important in your life.
Spoiler alert …
… Great new life loading 🙂
