Turn off the phone, and tune in to life

This weekend I could not escape children with cell phones. Like landmines, everywhere I went, I had to veer to avoid near collisions with kids either texting or talking on their phones.


Today I was eating lunch, when I noticed a boy and his grandfather sitting at the next table. The boy got up to make a call on his cell phone, and to give himself a little more privacy, he stepped away from the table (and directly into the walkway) to make his call. For the next five minutes he paced back in forth while pleading into his phone to be picked up because his grandfather was so boring. From his ashen face, I had to assume that the boy’s grandfather was just as aware of the conversation as the rest of the restaurant patrons, and I felt heart broken that the boy couldn’t value time with his grandfather. I was also irritated that the boy was completely unaware of the effect he was having on the people around him.


A NYMetroParents website article, “Should Kids have cell phones?” recommended that parents inform their children about cell phone etiquette, and mentioned that children should be made aware of the potential for eavesdropping. However, the article’s reference to phone manners really focused on students’ conversations in public, and places where students should have their phone off. Yet I feel the bright screen from texting is just as disturbing in a movie as a phone ringing, and I think that the incredible focus employed while texting has the potential to create more socially inappropriate and more dangerous behavior than talking on a phone.


For example, yesterday, I was nearly run over by a girl texting while driving, and after leaping back to the curb, I watched as she slowed to a stop in the middle of an intersection while the light was still green. However, while most of us are becoming increasingly aware of the dangers of driving and texting, we don’t seem as concerned about phone use during less life-threatening activities like walking. Yet, as I was leaving a bathroom stall yesterday, a young girl texting pushed me back into the stall while trying to enter it before I could leave. I actually physically had to brush against her to escape the stall, and yet she never made any indication that she knew I was there.


As teachers are asked to teach and promote appropriate social skills, I feel that understanding how technology affects social behavior is extremely relevant and important. I fear that as technology gets more personal, portable and entertaining, face-to-face social interaction amongst strangers will become increasingly rare. Due to our car-centered culture, few American children experience pedestrian activities outside of shopping malls and festivals. I notice that fewer children and young adults know how to walk within a crowd, or how to be physically polite by holding doors or letting someone move into a space first.


I tremble at the thought of a generation ambling through life without an indication of their effect on the world, because they are too focused on a device in their hand. I chose to be a teacher because I wanted to help future generations become responsible, productive caretakers of our society and our world. Yet children can’t be expected to learn from people they can’t see, or a world they don’t notice. Nor can they be expected to value a world they are not aware of or connected to. Therefore, part of my job as a teacher who seeks to promote the beneficial and responsible uses of technology, will be to teach my students when to turn that technology off.