When I was 10 or so, I fractured my wrist playing soccer at camp.[*] As my counselors drove me to the hospital, one yawned, then the other, and then I did. We couldn’t help ourselves, as if we were physically forced to follow suit. One counselor remarked that yawns are contagious, and we all agreed.
Checking your cell phone has become equally contagious. When I am in a car and someone gets in, or when I’m taking the bus and sitting across from someone, or walking by someone in a hallway, or any number of everyday situations, if I happen to be checking my phone, that someone will automatically check theirs. And, to my mild dismay, I find that I do the same. I take the shuttle at work often, and if someone else is checking email, I pull my phone out and check mine, even if I know there is nothing new to read or do.
It might be that the days during which I learned how to handle insecurity were also among the first in which I owned a cell phone. I don’t know though because I find that people of a slightly older generation do this as well. That doesn’t rule it out mind you, just suggests more research needs to be done. It also might be a status symbol. ”Hh you have a regular phone? I got a BlackBerry.” “A CrackBerry? well check out my iPhone”. I don’t think that is it either, because the puller-outer does not always have a nicer phone.
Anyway, just an observation.
[*] – it was just one of those memories that sticks with you. Possibly because of the intense pain I felt at the time, I don’t know. But I remember like it happened recently. Not yesterday. But recently.
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