Matthew Hansen
MATT MILLER/THE WORLD-HERALD
Omaha World-Herald: Hansen: We are slaves to our smartphones — we are the Facebook Zombie Army. We are the Walking and Tweeting Dead
That sets up some grand melodrama but Hansen's perceptions are accurate.
It was your classic 6-year-old’s drawing of a family, save for one thing: Mom and dad did not have eyes and noses and mouths.
Instead, they had a screen and buttons and apps.
This Omaha kid had drawn his parents as he often sees them. He had drawn his parents with iPhones for faces. It was cute. Funny. Also, terrifying.
- Omaha
The sketches he did of himself and his brother were not unusual but those of his parents were sketched as iPhone Heads (i.e. Hansen's description for them).
We have, almost every one of us, become slaves to our smartphones. We have become iPhone Heads.
There’s a growing body of research that suggests this rampant smartphone use isn’t merely annoying. It’s making us distracted, anxious, insomniacs.
It seems to be contributing to the following trends among teenagers: more likely to be depressed, more likely to be suicidal, less likely to drive, date, hang out with friends or leave the house.
It’s turning our city and world into a place where iPhone Faces of all ages roam the sidewalks and streets, our eyes tilted downward. We are the Facebook Zombie Army. We are the Walking and Tweeting Dead. We are the iPhone Heads.
- Omaha
You know that's exaggerated to some extent due to the number of people who loathe smartphones and won't use them for any reason except necessity such as dealing with online retailers, etc. It's the others who have become a concern.
The points in the article are fair and clearly articulated but they're so fuckin' horrible it gets oppressive to continue. The source article is there for the interested student and Hansen makes clear how much kids are screwing themselves with this combination of smartphones and social networks, particularly Facebook.
There's a strong argument to restrict access to smartphones for kids, particularly young ones, but that may be rejected even by parents who are not iPhone Heads.
The Rockhouse impression is the iPhones are not so terrible as it's the social networks which create the omnipresent need to maintain a face-down attitude toward the world due to constantly checking online status and engaging in the chat which comes as a result of it.
The kids know it's trivial but they're not stupid so they wind up bummed by it. Nevertheless, the relationship with the networks become similar to the one with smokers and cigarettes since smoking one more fag will make everything alright.
Unknown if that problem can be solved when Mark Zuckerberg has been making bank on them by keeping Facebook just as it is.
Zen Yogi: do we really need to flog Zuckerberg anymore when his shady ways are well-known?
We don't need him specifically but he has made himself the banner boy representing that type of behavior.
Zen Yogi: what behavior is that?
Sucking up to the jellies in the audience as their friend when his only purpose is to milk their presence for money and he makes one hell of a lot of it that way.
Zen Yogi: that sounds like a generic problem with sleazy corporate behavior
We all see there's no shortage of sleazy corporate behavior but it's different in social networks since there they take the kid and I don't see anyone who likes what becomes of them from that influence. That got Matthew Hansen inflamed to the point of writing his article and he voices a concern people have had regarding iPhone Heads.
Zen Yogi: so the vibe is Save the Children?
Sure, Yogi, but how about another with Save Yourself and it will inevitably benefit the children. Nothing is ever that simple so it's unknown what people will do. Meanwhile, there's that six-year-old kid from the top of the article who draws his parents like iPhones.
Zen Yogi: do you seek to scare us with a kid who brings Pink Floydian images of people going into their sausage grinder?
That image is implicitly terrifying, mate, and it's not my purpose to amplify the fact of that. Just seeing it is shocking enough already.
Zen Yogi: so the question is what to do about it?
Yep. I can't predict what people will do but I do see a growing number of people becoming alarmed by it. As above, the Rockhouse impression is the problem isn't so much the smartphones but the social networks which draw them so hopefully that focus will get tighter as people decide what needs to be done.
Zen Yogi: do you think people will really do anything?
Of course, mate, since that's the Hope. When people become more clear on how much Facebook is a brain suck with particularly destructive effect on the children, Zuckerberg will be lucky to get out of town with his lederhosen.
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