Are you hooked on your devices?

We are slaves to our smart phones. All of us! We have to put them away to focus on our spouse or hide them between our legs at meetings to focus. (Warning: hazard if you set your phone to vibrate!)

Are we robots? Can we still think? Our grandchildren are hooked to Xbox, and we are rummaging around our devices to find phone numbers, steps, activity stats and to make notes on conversations lest we forget what people are telling us!

Some of the big events in our changing lives circled around the telephone answering machine! Just 35 years ago, we never even thought that we could retrieve messages remotely. When my husband got his first car phone we almost needed a forklift to get it into the car it was so bulky and heavy. But we were modern and connected!

What a status symbol! A car phone and the antenna sticking up from the coupe roof! Chatting on the phone while driving was worth the bill. And it was expensive. Now we can get unlimited data for $45 a month! (Until you go over the data allowance which is written in italics in the fine print).

My father’s big luxury was a generator that looked like a extra large Electrolux sitting in our garage which turned on the lights during hurricane Hazel!!

So now we have the Fitbit, a wonderful device to register our steps and our capability to challenge ourself. Competition seems to be endemic to our generation. The Silent Generation and Baby Boomers who realized autonomy with the pill and women’s lib have the wonderful ability to show how fit we are.. Now we are competing daily to get those 10,000 steps or more each day! If we don’t we, take the cat for a walk after dinner to get another 1000 in there. So we wear the Fitbit around our neck or arm or even we can clip it to our underwear. (That’s where I lost mine, another story).

Then we who have apple smartphones have a heart app built in to make sure that all our pertinent info is logged into the phone should something happen to us. It takes at least an hour for me to enter all the meds, the Drs numbers and passwords to the hospital websites in the app. Wow, what a relief that that is done! As if anyone will look at it…..maybe after one is gone!

But wait! there’s another bunch of devices that we can use to monitor the robots that we are. A Lifeline will call emergency services when we fall accidentally or collapse. It can be worn around the neck as a pendant or as a bracelet. They say these work. Fortunately, we have not tried them! The cheapest one is $29.95 a month. Get your kids to pay for it.
You can find a list of Medical Guardians 800-317-5100. Just google Fitbit and you will get a medical alert comparison and the costs. It can even be paired with your ADT security system! That is, if you can remember to wear it! Write a message on your mirror in lipstick.

And, now there is a device that will track our wellness and mindfulness. Mindfulness! That means how many times a day that we relax, have a cocktail, or sleep. (What’s that?) It is almost able to smell alcohol. You wear it on your belt. It tracks breathing, stress, fights and general problems. Ohmmmmmmmmmmmmm……………

It should send a signal to your brain to remove all devices and take a nap!