Limit Smartphone, Laptop, and Tablet Usage

Yesterday I got some disturbing news. My oldest daughter recently was hired for a new job but only lasted 4 days. My wife and I assumed there were budget issues and our daughter was let go because of them. Then my wife visited someone associated with the company, which is where my daughter originally found out about the job in the first place. According to our friend, our daughter was let go because of not paying attention in the new hire training because she was spending time on her smartphone. Naturally there are two sides to every story and so my wife called our daughter to see if there was any truth to it. Of course my daughter didn't see it that way as she explained that "she wasn't using her phone any more than anyone else in the training." When I heard that, a buzzer in my head went off, followed by the phrase, "Wrong answer!"

While there may be other reasons why my daughter was let go from her job, her response shows that we could all use a little education on smartphone etiquette. Meetings and training classes can get boring. Trust me, I spend way too much time in them and I am often looking for something else to do. However I find that when I do pull out my phone is exactly the time that I miss some important information that often needs to be repeated and makes an already long meeting last even longer. That means I am being rude to the presenter as well as everyone else in the meeting.

I was ruminating over this thought today when I opened up one of my wife's health magazines and came across an article about how being glued to your gadgets can be bad for you. Northwestern University found that people who were exposed to blue light right before or during dinner felt an increase in hunger. For those that don't know, blue light is the type of light emitted by smartphones, tablets, and laptops. What this means is that our little gadgets are making us more hungry than we really are. No wonder I want to snack every time I sit in front of my laptop.

One anecdotal story does not make a trend but I imagine there are a number of missed opportunities because of being glued to our electronic gadgets. This coupled with the fact that our devices are making us hungrier ought to cause us to pause and think about it before we use them.