I think cell phones and social media are just placeholders that take up time. The net result is that people today are just tuned OUT a lot of the time wasting their lives on drivel.

IF you think of a cell phone as toy, that's one thing. I see it as a tool. Couple years ago, leaving Jackson Hole one morning, temp was -6F, blew a tire. Used my cell phone to call AAA, truck was there in 20 minutes, loaded us up on the truck, delivered us to a tire center, took care of the problem.

I had three near misses this morning from idiots obsessed with their cell phones while driving. Even though the state has made texting and driving a felony, I see many cellphone addicts that would rather risk a ticket the equal of a DUI than give up their electronic drug of choice.

Statistically, a driver using a cellphone is 60 times more likely to cause an accident than a drunk driver. It's frightening that we'd be safer if we made drunk driving legal and punished cellphone using drivers with license and vehicle confiscation. Of course the more rational thing would be the immediate destruction of their cellphones and a restriction to emergency call devices only for a decade.

If the reference is to the younger generation it is a contradiction in terms, since they do not think!!!

I have had a smartphone for years, but rarely use it. I found when I go somewhere, or just drive, I want no outside interruptions. I like personal time without stupid interruptions. Medical situations are different, then my phone is on. Otherwise, I feel i am not that indispensable that someone cannot survive without alaking to me, and I certainly do not need to hear from someone except when I want to. I see kids who sit at restaurants, and both they and their parents are all on the phone. Sad. I have read that toddlers who can't have their cell phones become anxious. Teen suicide rate has risen by 70%, maybe because they can't handle being alone anymore, and at some point electornic communication just does not do it anymore,

Pot has a far greater effect on people that cellphones ever did. Why aren't we being warned about that, anymore?

Great article! Thanks for sharing!

I’ll challenge anyone to running a small company requiring some travel. I’ll run mine with employees with smart phones, connected and active. You run yours without them. I will crush you. I will get at least 20% higher productivity and much better communications.

People play solitaire and tank battle, but there is great value available.

I guess people need something to talk about. A cell phone is a tool just like any other. A tire iron can be used for good or evil.

I dreamed about something like them when I saw Captain Kirk asking questions to the computer. In Miri they were helpless without their communicators to linked to servers on board their ship.

Now I wonder if I'm missing out on ideas I had in the minutes I was bored on the bus or in line.

I know I have worked with people who honestly believe they can use the points in scrums that require less brain power to address a few issues quickly on Slack. It's inordinately infuriating when I realize they have only a superficial understanding of something someone said because they thought just getting bits and pieces, "boards might be delayed" and "latency may be causing the issue", were all they really needed to glean. Then you have to catch them up. I wish they politely got up and left the meeting, because I am very against sitting in conference rooms and feigning interest. But they think they can modulate how much attention they have to pay.

I've probably done this to some degree, and I really apologize to anyone on the other end of it. Sitting at my desk, sometimes I turn on a podcast if I'm balancing QB, formatting a spreadsheet, checking constraints, etc, because I know those tasks do not take 100% brain power. But it's quite another thing to be in a discussion among three people where one person thinks she/he can sort of half engage.

This is a good problem to have in some ways. Star Trek predicted in some ways we would feel like we lost something to computers, but it didn't precisely predict how we would feel.

I wonder if there will be a backlash, or if Google Glass was ahead of its time and soon we'll just accept that people we interact with in person are also interacting with computer data. Might disconnecting from Google Glass become a sign of intimacy?

I encourage my kids to go out and play. Their peers don't go out. Their generation will experiment with drugs, sex, and doing things without parents at much older ages than I did. I want my son and daughter trying them in high school, if they so desire. I love how the cub scouts began saying they want kids responsibly playing with fire, knives, and power tools. Heck yes. Use technology. Don't let it use you.

Kids should not be given a cellphone by their parents. It is very convenient and a cop out from their parental responsibilities. The kids leave them alone and immerse themselves in texting and other "entertainment" smart phones offer.

A modern phenomenon of our age is that people are being bored. The average men and women don't know what to do with their lives and waiting to be "entertained". They are waiting for something from the outside to provide meaning to their lives. That is the role cell phones filled.

These devices have a use and people who manage their lives know what to use them for. But the majority replaced that use and assigned a greater significance to them