Consider carefully the message in the following article by Francis Bea for Digital Trends. Wherever we are, whatever we are doing, our cell is on and close by—always on, always on us, as Sherry Turkle likes to say. Why? Because real life (RL) now imitates digital life (DL). We have adopted a menu driven existence even in RL. We want options, all the time. We want an escape hatch from our discomfort, boredom, or insecurity about living in the here and now. We want Option B to whatever happens to be going on at the moment.
The end result is we live as though whatever we are doing at the moment might be preempted by a better offer at any time. So we sit with our cell phone out as we talk to a colleague. The phone rings and suddenly option B rears its head. You think, “It’s my daughter calling. It could be important.”
Whether you take the call or not is not really the point here. In fact, you can reasonably argue that having your cell handy allows you to manage simultaneous parallel universes—the one represented by the conversation you are having and the others that exist via your cell phone. One of these is reminiscent of life in a small community. Friends and family who were lost to us before cell phones now travel in our pockets. Community and devotion to family are powerful forces. Maybe your daughter is in trouble, or simply checking in as you had asked her to do. There are a million good reasons to take the call.
The more important point here is that by leaving the cell phone on and close by, once again you have created a situation that doesn’t allow you to focus on the moment. The underlying tragedy here is that focus is one of the true casualties of the digital age.
—J.O.
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More Than Half of Americans Fiddle With Phones While Watching TV
JULY 19, 2012 BY FRANCIS BEA
www.digitaltrends.com
We just can't seem to disconnect. A new study finds a majority of Americans supplement their television viewing experience with their phones, for everything from fact checking to burning time during commercial breaks.
Internet users are in need of constant stimulation. We’ll pay games on our smartphones when we’re waiting for the train, check our email while we’re walking to work, and according to research by The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, 52 percent of adult cellphone owners will supplement their television watching with their phone.
The study, titled “The Rise of the Connected Viewer,” discovered that cell phone owners use the device during television commercial breaks (38 percent), to corroborate a fact or news that they’ve just heard on television (22 percent), and vote for a reality show contestants (6 percent).
Of the 57 percent who have downloaded apps, use the Internet or email on their phones, the report found that 35 percent of users read what other people were saying online (20 percent of all cell-phone owners), 20 percent post comments (11 percent of all cell owners), and 19 percent communicated with friends via text message (11 percent of all cell owners). Interestingly enough, 29 percent of cellphone owners used their phones specifically to text friends who were watching the same program.
Collectively, this data sums up to 52 percent of all adult cellphone owners who have participated in one of the aforementioned activities with their phones while watching television.
The study had also found that cell phone owners with a $50,000 household income were more inclined to use their phones while watching television than those with a lower annual household income. In addition, cell phone owners with some college experience were more likely to use their phones than those who didn’t graduate from high school.
Not surprisingly, the youngest recorded demographic exhibited the highest use of their cellphone while watching TV. Among the 18-to-24 age group, 81 percent of viewers used their phones while watching TV, followed by the 25-to-34 age group with 72 percent of users.
Clearly, there’s value in the business of offering supplemental information during television programming, and many content companies are catching on. For example, HBO Go has an app that enables Game of Thrones audiences to keep track of the locations where the scenes are taking place within the fantasy world. Microsoft ‘s SmartGlass initiative will bring similar capabilities to the Xbox, for both gaming and TV.
Do you use your phone while watching TV? If you do, what do you use it for?