Communication Breakdown: How Cell Phones Hurt Communities

It was a fresh morning after a night of rain and we were hiking up into the mountains in Southern France. The plants and trees glowed with green, vibrant life. Sheep and cows were meandering in the fields, and the sky was blue, stretching out for miles. Then I heard a faint beeping noise that didn't sound like a bird. The Italian hiker next to me had a heavy pack and was sweating profusely in the cool morning. He heard the beep and didn't hesitate to pick up his phone; it was his mother calling to see if he was alright at the start of his hiking trip. For the next ten minutes, instead of listening to birds sing and observing the morning view, he had a conversation with someone who wasn't there.

This was the start of a month long hike I took through northern Spain on the Camino de Santiago. I decided to take this break from work in part to get away from my cell phone and the computer screen. This time away offered me some perspectives on how, to paraphrase Thoreau, I had become a tool of my tools.

Before I left with my partner April on the hike, I read an interesting essay in the magazine Adbusters called "Technoslave," written by Eric Slate. In the essay Slate recalls, "Once, while I was riding on a crowded bus, the man sitting next to me threw his cell phone out the window. When his phone rang, instead of dutifully answering it, he casually tossed it away. I was stunned. He looked at me, shrugged and looked away. I had no idea if it was his, if it was stolen or if he even knew what a cell phone was. But in one seemingly careless motion, he managed to liberate himself from something that has completely consumed me."

This story resonated with me. Like so many other people these days, my livelihood is based on being connected -- online, or on my cell phone. But five years into what had essentially become an addiction to cell phone use, I realized that instead of keeping me connected to the world, my cell phone had set up a wall between me and the people and community around me. And I'm not the only one. When hiking through Spain, off the Verizon grid of connectedness, I reflected on how cell phone use has crept into every aspect of daily life, ironically weakening the basic human communication that is the fabric of any community.

Planet Cell Phone

Billions of people across the world use cell phones. In some European countries, the number of cell phones in use is higher than the total number of people living there. Though cell phones can be wonderful, liberating tools of communication, freeing us from the confines of an office, and providing more leisure time, they often do the exact opposite. Cell phone use has blurred the boundaries between work and non-work time, increasing stress and tension within families and between friends. As Noelle Chesley, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, explained in a report on CBS News, "The question of 'blurred boundaries' may become an irrelevant one for the next generation of workers, spouses, and parents because they cannot imagine life any other way." As Slate commented in his Adbusters essay, "It seems the more 'connected' we are, the more detached we become."

Back on the hiking trail in Spain I saw this play out in a myriad of ways. Though I was experiencing cell-freedom, throughout the trip, I found myself surrounded by people, mainly Europeans, on their cell phones, texting and talking with concerned family members and friends throughout the day. People were torn between developing friendships with strangers and calling up or texting old friends and family they already knew. Similarly, back in the U.S., I often found myself checking my messages or making a phone call rather than striking up a conversation with a stranger at the post office or bus stop. In this way, I was cutting off potentially eye-opening conversations and new friendships. I also walked around, talking on my cell phone, ignoring my surroundings and neighborhood the same way that Italian hiker did that morning in the mountains. If we can't talk to face to face with our neighbors, or notice the world we're walking through now, where will cell phone use take our communities and families five years down the road?