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Stop blaming it on the phone.
Our Devices Are Not the Devil
There are two elements in the photo above. One is the phone, the other is the person holding it. The phone is getting all attention these days. For good and for ill. We’ve been told they were designed to be addictive. And that’s right.
But can we stop blaming everything on our devices? They are not the devil, anymore than tobacco or alcohol or oxy are the devil. The devil is our unconsciousness. Our blind subservience to excess. Our own poor choices.
We have a responsibility to ourselves. It’s the mark of maturity — and very few of us were trained to tackle these responsibilities. We were more likely trained to look like we were tackling them, not to actually tackle them.
And while it’s important to call companies out for making products more addictive so they can make more money (the tobacco industry, the sugar industry, big pharma, tech), it is also important to identify where they end and we begin.
We have so many choices. And when we make the wrong ones (because it’s so much easier), we whine about the outcomes. We blame [fill in the blank, because pretty much anything will fit in here].
