You’re sitting in a restaurant, waiting for your friend to show up. You pull out your smartphone. You’re feeling awkward at a party. You pull out your smartphone. You’re on the subway, headed to work. You pull out your smartphone. Matthew Daniel Siskin, the founder of the studio designedmemory, has created an Instagram account: @WE_HAVE_TO_STOP.
On the profile are dozens of images of people, in groups or alone, looking at their smartphones. Taken separately, there’s nothing exceptional about these photographs. In fact, they’re pretty humdrum. It’s only when you see them all at once that something seems awry. Their eyes are riveted on their phones, which have become a natural extension of their hands.
Siskin develops websites and digital marketing strategies. He isn’t some reactionary complaining about how, “it was better before.” What he’s criticizing isn’t the tool itself, which improves our lives in many ways, but the ungodly amount of time we spend using it.
In October, the Manchester-based marketing agency Tecmark released a terrifying survey of how much we use our phones. Even before getting out of bed, many of us have already checked our emails and Facebook pages on our phone. And it’s not just mornings we spend on our phones: 221 times a day, we pick it up to check our mail, send messages or look something up. At this rate, if man is slowly shedding his pinky toe through evolution, he might gain another finger to help him scroll, click and send those messages out more quickly.
Whether it’s a knowing wink or a wake-up call, this collection of photographs is posted on Instagram, a smartphone application that allows users to share their photographs with others. This message needs to be seen by the greatest number of people—which is why it’s on a smartphone.
http://instagram.com/we_have_to_stop
http://www.tecmark.co.uk/smartphone-usage-data-uk-2014/
