The Zombies Are Here, Now!

A few days ago I was sitting in a café having breakfast as I usually do on Wednesday mornings before my classes. The place is pretty large and located in a popular business/shopping center in the center of Kharkiv. And it has free Wi-Fi.

There are few people when I first come in, and it’s usually pretty quiet. Somewhere between 8:30 and 9:00 it starts to fill up with teenagers. Apparently there is a high school nearby. They begin to swarm in groups around tables (we used to call such groups “cliques”). Some mornings, like this one, there are quite a lot of them.

Generally, they don’t buy anything. They just take up space and free Wi-Fi bandwidth. That’s nothing new. But the thing that really gets my attention is what they do in their gaggles around the tables: practically nothing except to stare at the little electronic screens in their hands.

Socializing in Isolation

They gather in groups, which one would think is about socializing in person with friends, creating and cementing bonds, stuff like that. But even as they sit there shoulder-to-shoulder with their friends, they almost completely ignore each other. Their faces are transfixed on their mobile devices. If they say anything at all, it’s about something they see on their devices, probably suggesting that their friends check it out as well.

It strikes me as incredibly odd how these teenagers feel a need on one hand to gather and associate with one another, yet on the other hand are so consumed by their mobile phones that they do so in virtual isolation.

As I was looking at a group closest to me, I saw one guy who was not staring at a phone. He was looking around and trying to talk to others in his group, they occasionally answered him, barely looking up from their tiny screens. He seemed OK with it. Interestingly, he was the only one I saw who actually bought something from the café.

It was sad to look around that place and see so many faces bent downwards into mobile phones: almost all of them. What are these kids going to become when they grow up?

But it’s not limited to teenagers. Look around in almost any public place these days and you see people zombified by smart phones and tablets. And this is Ukraine, which has historically run a little behind the West in these sorts of things. I can only imagine how complete the zombification must be in Denver, Boston, Paris or Tokyo.

Massive Psychological Shift?

Maybe it’s even beyond sad. Sometimes it seems to me like there is some evil force at work here, something that is creating a psychological shift in the masses, systematically changing how our brains work, creating a generation of mindless drones who simply take in the numbing pabulum of the Internet.

These days, a person can’t take a short bus ride, go up briefly in an elevator, or stand in a line for a few minutes without his or her face in a mobile device. And in most cases, they aren’t getting anything new or special from what they see; often they are looking at the same stuff on Facebook or their Instagram feeds for the third or fourth time. It just gives them something to do to avoid being in the real world.

Something is definitely wrong here, something that speaks to a growing psychological problem.

The psychological effect comes to light in the way people treat their devices compared to how they treat other people. More and more, the devices seem to matter more, to be more important. What we would normally consider common courtesy seems to be disappearing.

It's Personally Insulting

A few months back, I had lunch with someone I know. She immediately put her smartphone on the table and was constantly looking down at it as alerts came across the screen. It was like our conversation – any my company – was secondary to whatever popped up on her screen.

I didn’t say anything at the time, but in retrospect it was really disrespectful and offensive. And I know that I won’t tolerate it again in the future. If you want to be in my company, then be in my company; if you want to focus on your phone, then goodbye!

I’ve made it a point recently to “lay down the law” regarding mobile devices in my classroom. At the beginning of each course, I let people know that they’re free to use their devices for translation if necessary, but that I will not tolerate people sitting in class checking out their messages or, even worse, writing messages. The class is only 55 minutes – they can live that long without their devices.

Every day I see people in my office, on the street, and elsewhere who can’t seem to do anything or go anywhere without their faces in their devices. As they walk, they are often hazards to others and themselves, but they are so hypnotized, so dependent on some kind of satisfaction they get from these things, that they can’t stop themselves. It’s scary.

Now, I have an iPhone, and I even have an Apple Watch, so I am pretty connected. But I own the devices – they don’t own me. In class, my phone goes into my bag. If I meet a friend, the phone stays in a pocket or bag, NOT on the table. I refuse to insult someone that way.

Almost exactly four years ago, April 7, 2013, I wrote a post on this subject called Losing Our Humanity. It all seemed pretty sad to me even then. But now, it just seems to be getting exponentially worse. I don’t know what the answer is, but I think this video says it all…

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