Gi
THE SMARTPHONE
DILEMMA Alison Ochs Owner/President EDIT Change Management SĂ rl I then became curious to see if he was the only one looking
L
down and turned around to scan the audience. I found young ast May I was sitting at the University of Amsterdam
adults checking their social media feeds as their friend talked
watching a young woman defend her Ph.D. on social
about her research and some of the negative effects of social
media. She asked for all phones to be put away and
media to distinguished professors.
on silent. She was ignored. A seven-year-old boy spent 80 minutes playing the same game as the screen lit up his face,
Two evenings before this speech I had been in Het
distracting me.
Concertgebouw in Amsterdam to see Wynton Marsalis play the music of Duke Ellington. The young man in front of me
Flashes of light and a little man ran across bars of his screen
spent a significant portion of the concert on Facebook and
as he maneuvered his phone to the left and right, not taking
Instagram.
note of the stained glass windows, the artwork, the painted
friends, his chats, and likes where flashing in front of my site,
beams, or the beautiful robes worn by the professors. I had
distracting me from the music and the vibe in the room. I
to wonder why the child was missing school for this event if
scowled at him; after the intermission, he changed seats with
he didn’t take the time to look up from his screen even once.
his partner, his phone out of my eyesight but still in use.
8
I was greatly annoyed as the pictures of his
