Intelligence Beaten for Pace

Intelligence Beaten for Pace

If you feel overjoyed that the device in your hand at this very moment is fully in your control, so I apologize and request you to change your openion. The tiny device that you might be holding at this moment is ruling your mind. Quite shocking is this claim, isn't it? This tiny device controlling a six feet tall, strong man like you. It may seem difficult to accept what I claim; nevertheless, the harsh reality is that these tiny devices drive our emotions and intellectual power and for many reasons do I say this. 

If you are in your mid-thirties, you must have experienced playing in the streets on a scorching summer afternoon. Man always has had something to do in times of leisure. The basic difference between those leisure activities and today's modern leisure activity "social media" is that those games were rather dumb and could not control our emotions and intellectual power; whereas, today's modern leisure activity, in particular social media, is quite rational. Rational in the sense that it is empowered with artificial intelligence. For those who know little or nothing about the term artificial intelligence so it is an evolving subject in computer sciences which deals with empowering a machine with intelligence mainly automated decision making without human interference. 

Coming back to my point, social media is rational and even more rational than the so-called rational human being. If you feel that I object the rationality of the supreme creature, so I do it and do it for some reason. 

For readers' curiosity, the UN's International Telecommunication Union (ITU) came up with a mind-blowing revelation that there are more phones than people currently in the world. It states that some 5.28 billion people around the world have mobile broadband subscriptions and some 1.1 billion people do not own a mobile phone. However, the statement that there are more phones than people must be carefully understood that many people own multiple phones for different reasons i.e. businessman in particular. 

It is also shocking that out of the 5.28 billion mobile phone users, 3.2 billion people worldwide own a smartphone. Mobile device usage statistics for 2019 reveal that 48% of the total 4.39 billion internet users are smartphone users. 

Surveys also reveal that an average smartphone user has 63 interactions with his/her phone per day. The scariest part is that kids get their hands on their first smartphone around the age of 12. The latest research reveals that 56% of children aged between eight and twelve own a cell phone. 

The reason for presenting all these statistics is to facilitate the understanding of what I claim. 

Imagine touching your phone 50 plus times every single day and spending an average of 2 hours 51 minutes every single day. It is devastating to know, isn't it? From my point of view, some conditions lure us to do it even when we don't want to do it. 

Firstly, I feel we don't have any motive in life. Aimless as we are, we spend our time on stuffs that benefit us in no way. Take the example of social media and let us just be candor for a moment, how does it improve our productivity, or take us near to our destiny which in most cases we haven't thought of. Most people live in a fool's paradise, saying they get a lot of knowledge from it. I can simply regard it as an excuse for failure. Because it is very difficult to maintain focus on social media. You can easily be prey to detraction. Once it detracts you, you are literally at the mercy of Artificial Intelligence, which I just introduced earlier. Artificial Intelligence bombards you with the relevant content to your last search. Thus, it is critical of what we search and what we play. We can easily be lured to play a song or a video with a catchy title while we are busy in an important work. Soon will we find ourselves in the pool of that relevant material and to come out of this pool, there are some conditions that must occur. One of them being, the battery power must end of either of the two entities entangled: we or the smartphone. Though it is rare as I mentioned. Gritty as we are, we never say die. 

The second critical reason is that we are not disciplined. We don't know how much should we use mobile, social media in particular, and when to use it. Statistics reveal that adults never leave their homes without their cell phones. On average, we keep our mobiles close to ourselves for 22 hours every day. 80% of smartphone users check their phones within 15 minutes after waking up. Such extravagant use of mobile phones has led to many social problems. A little story to quote: 

A mother asks her little son what he wants to be in the future. The little son replies, "I wish to be a smartphone." The mother shockingly asks the reason, and the little boy says: "Because Papa loves his smartphone more than me."

Thus, it is crucial to understand the serious threat these tiny devices pose to our lives. We need to manage our time and abandon the extravagant use of mobile, social media in particular. 

Ending with this sentiment, that lock-down is a marvelous opportunity for learning new skills. Plus an opportunity to ponder how much time do we waste daily, and how much do we have in spare? The later part of the question still remains unanswerable. Social distancing is the best approach not only for saving oneself from the deadly environmental virus, Corona, but we also need to distance ourselves from this fatal abstract virus, social media.