Posted on 04/18/2023 4:56:46 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Returning from Washington after the court hearing on Friday, I took the Amtrak train to Penn Station, and then the subway a few stops down to my home in Greenwich Village. It being the tail end of the rush hour, the subway was relatively crowded.
A few moments after getting on the subway train, something struck me: every single person in my field of vision was staring at a smartphone screen. Here was the view of one side of the car:
And this was the view of the other side:
It appears that we have achieved 100% peak smartphone saturation.
Could this phenomenon be related to the near total disappearance of critical thinking among young people today?
I hate having people walk into me in the grocery store or nearly hit me in the parking lot because they are walking/driving while on their smart phone.
In the old days, subway riders would be reading a magazine or a newspaper. This is different, but not much different.
morons still wearing masks, too
Why is almost everyone in these pictures female? No guys ride the subway?
Young men are less likely to be employed in professional jobs nowadays. Corporations have found women to be more compliant cogs.
As a number of commenters at the MC site pointed out, if all of those passengers were reading novels or news articles on their phones (not that I think all or even most were), why would that be troublesome? After all, one could probably find a picture from 50 or more years ago in which everybody on some commuter train was staring at a newspaper (back when they actually published “news”).
On the other hand: one anecdote that will stick with me forever - while hurrying down a wide hall in a local university I crossed paths with 4 students walking abreast - each staring at their cell phone as they walked, none so much as acknowledging the existence of another. Back in my college days we’d at least be giving each other grief, engaging in repartee, trying to tell off-color jokes, or poking at each other attempting to instigate a response.
Also, burying your face in a smartphone is a good idea on the NYC subways. The less eye contact you make with anybody, the safer you will be. Also, I recommend earbuds with the volume off or turned down. This keeps you situationally aware while allowing you to pretend you don't hear the pandhandler coming down the aisle looking for a handout.
On the commuter trains, I switch to an actual book or laptop. I get the best quality seatmates when I'm reading a book or working on my laptop. Again, passengers on crowded trains are always looking for decent people to sit next to and those who read books or have laptops are seens as such.
Almost never see a newspaper on a train anymore! I remember the days when everybody was buried in a newspaper on a NYC train. In a way, those were better than smartphones because you could peek over the top of them to see what was going on around you without being obvious about it.
Totally agree that in NYC and similar human-dense habitats, it can be extremely dangerous to make eye contact with anyone in close proximity.
That was my first thought on reading Menton’s comments. However, like Marshall McCluhan pointed out in the 1960’s about the different effects of radio vs TV, I suspect reading on a smartphone has a different impact than reading a newspaper of 20 years ago.
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