“Being distracted reduces our empathy for others and blunts responses in the brain. So it’s possible that being distracted may also reduce our own happiness.”–Sylvia Morelli, TIME July 8-15, 2013
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So if kids and other e-media users want to be happy (likely based on getting along with or connecting with others) and more mentally sharper/aware, then they need to become less distracted. Hmmmm, what are the major distracting devices in our society today? How do those devices make people more self-focused and self-centered with less contact with real people, nature, and their immediate surroundings? If individuals lose touch with others, nature, and their immediate surroundings, how does that affect their physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual connectedness? How does that affect the way they see and view others? How does that affect their relationships, school work, or responsibility in the working world? How does that affect their fitness for long-term relationships or commitment as well as fitness for raising a family? If they feel nothing for others, who will do the demanding hospital and health care work and child care? If they feel no empathy, how will they respond to the pain and suffering of others? Will sympathy bite the dust because the condition of empathy is diminished? How chaotic and unstandardized will education become? How much more can the world become uncaring with all this e-media distraction?
It’s all there in Morelli’s quote–what we have become or shall become. It’s a pretty dark, depressing sort of scenario thanks to how much a society has sold its young, its individuals, and consumers to the great god of e-technology. Wireless Is The Word, baby! Get with the program and dumb-dumb wa–a-y down. Forget all about nature, beauty, mind, spirit, and soul. That’s just old stuff that no one needs.