Nothing else I've written this past year has
garnered reader response like my column on my
unhealthy dependence on a BlackBerry. And for
once, nobody disagreed with my perspective. Our
society has become addicted to mobile devices
and what they do for us and to us.
I got dozens of e-mails and text messages
(via my BlackBerry) from people, mostly parents.
I even got one from my boss. Of all the
feedback, nothing resonated like this experience
shared by my friend whose eighth-grade daughter
goes to school with my children in St. Paul,
Minn. She wrote: "Your 'Crackberry' article was
well timed. We are all trying to wrestle this
demon to the ground in the lives of our kids, if
not our own. My daughter had forgotten her phone
charger at a friend's house last weekend and was
without it for several days. At first she was
really anxious when she realized her phone would
be dead for days and she would be out of the
loop. A couple of days into it I realized we
have old phones lying around in junk drawers,
and I told her to put her (memory) card into one
of those and use it. But a few days without the
phone had given her a new experience of 'being'
without the monkey on her back of being
connected to the phone. When I offered an old
phone to her again, she said quietly, 'No
thanks, Mom. It has actually been a real relief
not having it for a few days. Kind of like a
vacation.' I was so amazed and saddened by her
answer. We give these phones to our kids because
they crave them and find them so necessary. But
inadvertently we are consigning them to much of
the stress that adults feel by being accessible
to EVERYONE, ALL THE TIME! I think it may be
time to rethink this for everyone!"
I felt an odd sense of relief in her
perspective; in more ways than one, I'm not
alone. It's a daily challenge to detach from my
BlackBerry. It's even tougher to know where to
draw the line with my three teenagers and their
cell phones. Like all parents, I want them to
stay connected to me, and a simple land line
isn't a viable option anymore, even though I
ponder how my parents pulled it off when I was
growing up in the 1970s. Their unwavering rule
was that I call them if I was going to be late
after a date with my girlfriend or making plans
on the fly with my friends. And so I did, from a
pay phone, I think.
Today's mobile media make it easier for kids
to let us know when they are running late after
school or stuck in an airport in a snowstorm.
From the parking lot at school, they can share
the immediate thrill of a good grade on an exam
or reach out to a sick grandparent in a big-city
hospital from the remoteness of a campground in
the middle of nowhere. By voice, text or e-mail,
today's pay phone conveniently is attached to
our belts or tucked in our purses or, worse,
worn in our ears.
In this space each week, I usually write
about issues related to addiction to alcohol or
other drugs. Sometimes I successfully can pull
off a column like last week's about being hooked
on my BlackBerry. But I realized that in the
last line of her e-mail, my friend — the mother
of the eighth-grader — had helped to drive home
a point that I always am striving to make about
addiction: "I think it may be time to rethink
this for everyone!"
What if we substituted "alcoholism" for "iPhone"
and "drug addiction" for "BlackBerry"? Maybe
then our communities finally would pay attention
and come up with a solution for our biggest
problem of all.
William Moyers is the vice president of
foundation relations for the Hazelden Foundation
and the author of "Broken," his best-selling
memoirs, and "A New Day, A New Life." Please
send your questions to William Moyers at
wmoyers@hazelden.org. To find out more about
William Moyers and read his past columns, visit
the Creators Syndicate Web page at
www.creators.com.
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