Don't read this while walking
When I step out to run errands, whether it is to shop for groceries or to get my hair cut or whatever, more often than not, I intentionally leave my cellphone behind at home. Do you?
I started doing this a while ago, but of course only when I am driving in town. I leave the cellphone behind fully knowing I might be away from my phone for a couple of hours sometimes.
I systematically began doing this because of a worry that my mental makeup was getting affected by the tether to this electronic gadget. A worry that I was becoming the Pavlovian dog responding to the notifications from the smartphone.
In the old days, when stopped at a traffic light, if I looked at the rear-view or side view mirrors, there was a fair chance that I would see the eyes of the driver behind me. But, I started noticing that increasingly the drivers' heads are down. No eye contact anymore. They are gazing down at their gadgets.
Even though I rarely ever look at my smartphone when away from home, I decided that I needed to break the chain. Of course, most of the time when I go for walks I am naked without the phone anyway. Driving around in town without the phone was not going to be anything that dramatic. Nonetheless, I decided that I ought to, in order to make sure my brain doesn't get reprogrammed the way the industry would like to brainwash me.
Even until a few years ago, that's what we did, remember? The landline is all we had and we went about our lives. Sure, we might have missed calls. But then we made sure to have an answering machine so that the bill collectors could leave their nasty messages ;) And remember how some of your annoying friends had some atrocious outgoing messages that made you wait forever for the beep but they thought they were being funny?
The world has changed in a very short time, so fast that the NYT has this headline: “Walking and Using a Phone Is Bad for Your Health”.
Imagine that. People have to be reminded that using a phone while walking is bad for one’s health!
We apparently need such a reminder because even when on the bike path or hiking, I rarely ever see a single person who is not on the phone. Sometimes, even if it is a couple—one is on the phone as the other person walks along. Parents talking not to the kids right there with them but to somebody else on their smartphones. Or texting. Or Instagramming!
Until the earbuds came along, I could at least see thin wires dangling from the ears. Now, the person walks and talks and sometimes I even wonder if they are loudly talking with themselves until I get close enough to see earbuds.
This being a town, like many across the country, where mentally ill or drug-induced people are out and about talking with themselves, the outward behavior of the walk/talk people and the unhoused are oddly similar, and I have to be on the alert for any sudden anti-social behavior!
Back to the NYT story:
[The] screen in your hand isn’t just diverting your attention. It also changes your mood, your gait and your posture — and hinders your ability to get from point A to point B without running into trouble.
Consider the multiple effects listed there: Inattention, bad gait and posture, and the walk ends up draining you instead of re-energizing you.
“Generally, when people go for a walk, they feel better afterwards, and this is what we saw in the phone-free walking group,” said Elizabeth Broadbent, one of the authors of the study and a professor of health psychology at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.
“In the phone-walking groups, these effects were reversed,” she added. “Instead of feeling more positive after walking, people felt less positive — less excited, less happy, less relaxed.”
She and her study coauthors attributed these negative effects to a diminished connection with the surrounding environment — it’s now widely accepted that walking in natural spaces is good for your mental health. “It appears that to get these benefits, it’s important that your attention is on the environment, rather than on your phone,” she said. It’s also possible, she added, that walking and trying to use a phone is simply annoying, and that’s why it sours your mood.
I don’t ever understand why people walking in nature would not want to relax there, watching the sights and listening to the sounds. Don’t they enjoy a woodpecker somewhere knocking its beak against the wood? Or the geese being honking loud? The flow of the river. The sound of wind through the trees.
There are great relaxing, therapeutic, and re-energizing opportunities all around when walking. I often blog about some of them that I see, and I complain that people are missing out on these riches when they are yakking on the phone as they walk by the river and oblivious to the osprey suddenly diving towards the river, the mama duck and the ducklings floating by, the heron flying, and the turkey vultures circling above. Whatever could be more valuable to talk about than these riches right there?
I don't believe in giving up the smartphone. Just like with the food that I eat, it is all about moderation. I want to make sure that I own the phone, and that the iPhone does not own me. I want to make sure that walking keeps me healthy—physically and mentally.
So, here’s what I recommend: Plan on a systematic disconnect from that ball and chain that restricts you. No, I am not referring to your spouse, but to your smartphone 🤣