Cell Sucking

My kids are still relatively young, so I know there are a lot of uncharted parenting waters that await me. However, at this stage of motherhood, there is one thing I did with my babies that I am still quite proud of: 

I took away their pacifiers when they turned one. 

Hard core, right? The reason for this was that I feared that the older they got, the more difficult it would be to ween them from their binkies, and I didn't want to be the mom of a kindergartener who was still dependent upon one.

As my girls have matured, so has technology. Ten to twelve years have passed since my Battle of the Binkies, and ninety-one percent of Americans now own a cell phone. Sixty-one percent of those cells are smartphones.

Two and a half years ago I joined the sixty-one percent, and here's what I've discovered:

• When I owned a modest flip phone, it took waaay too long to text (Hitting a button three times for one letter? Puh-lease.) and I couldn't access the internet. As such, I rarely had my phone with me. It was fine hanging out in my purse … without me … for hours on end.

• Once I obtained a smartphone, everything changed (Read more about that over here.) I can text a whole paragraph faster than I could text two words on my old phone. My email and social media sites are available to me anytime and anyplace, so naturally I check them constantly.

• I never leave my smartphone alone. Unless it's charging, which, if I time it right, is at bedtime so I can still have it near me while it's refueling for the next day. It's not that I can't sleep without it, it's just that I … sleep better with it. Yeah, that's it.
  
  

Allow me to elaborate a little on that last point. The ios7 came out last September, but I haven't installed it yet. Wanna know why? Because my husband has to back up everything on my phone in order to make room for the new operating system. This will take hours. Hours AWAY from ME. The thought of this makes me anxious. Why? What is it about this hand held device that has such a hold on me? Why must I carry it from room to room, everywhere I go? It's become an extension of my arm, as if I have a hand on the end of one wrist, and a phone on the end of the other. Forget Edward Scissor Hands … I'm Edward Cellphone Hands! And you know what? I'm not the only one like this. Case in point: My twenty year old niece walked right into a hot tub, A HOT TUB FULL OF WATER, holding her phone. Worse than that? It took several seconds and her friends pointing before she even realized her phone was in her hand UNDER THE WATER. Why? Because it's always with her. Always.

Here's the harsh reality. These phones have become our security. THEY'RE OUR ADULT BINKIES!! We whine when they're not working. We get all fidgety and cranky when we forget them at home. We make sure everyone knows, through a tweet or Facebook post if and why we don't have them. It seems that rather than spending any spare moments to practice the presence of God, or search His Word for peace and direction, we'd rather check out the latest life hacks. 

You know that phrase, “You can't take it with you?” How about, “There's no cell service in Heaven.” The face to face contacts and relationships we create on this earth in the short time we have left, is what will matter for Eternity. Not how many followers we have on Twitter.

Man. Who would have guessed that the smartphone technology would actually cause us to regress back to the Terrible Twos? With the exception of a few self-controlled adults, it seems we're just a bunch of oversized toddlers, sucking on our cells.

Image found here.