The best comedians are those who notice reality as it is, and allow us to also see the absurdities that come with it. One of my favorite observers is Amy Poehler, whose deadpan delivery and comedic earnestness has been a central fixture of both SNL and Parks and Rec. But perhaps one of my favorite bits she has ever done was not on screen, but rather the concluding chapter of her new memoir, Yes Please. In a chapter entitled the robots will kill us all: a conclusion, Poehler discusses how cellphones aim to kill us. It’s both funny and sad, because it’s true.
She begins by recounting an early cellphone encounter, after which she told her friend “Nope…I just don’t need it. Cellphones aren’t for me. What am I going to do? Carry this thing around all day?” As someone who is currently writing this article on a phone, the claim sounds almost quaint. But it’s not pure ludditism that causes Poehler’s initial dislike of phones; what she reacts against is modern technology’s tendency to divorce us from real time and real life.
In a country where, according to a 2014 Pew survey, 90% of adults have a cellphone and 58% of those phones are smartphones, Poehler’s observations hit close to home for many of us. Now a phone owner, she reflects that, “my phone sits in my pocket like a packet of cigarettes used to. I am obsessed and addicted and convinced my phone is trying to kill me. I believe this to be true.” She then proceeds to list off the following reasons why:
- My phone does not want me to finish this work or any work in general.
- My phone does not want me to have friends.
- My phone wants me to feel bad about how I look.
- My phone wants to show me things I shouldn’t see.
- My phone wants me to love it more than I love my children.
- People text and drive and die. People check their emails and get hit by trucks. People fall into shopping mall fountains and the security footage is passed around the Internet and the person dies of embarrassment.
- My phone won’t let me go.
But Poehler doesn’t simply provide a listicle. She offers us the sort of incredibly thoughtful observations of why that perhaps only someone constantly aware of the absurdities found in life can.
Poehler notes that phones constantly distract us from immediately engaging with the life in front of us. After googling “quotes about mindfulness,” I just spent fifteen minutes I ought to have been spending writing this entering a vortex of opinion and research pieces, along with checking my Twitter, Facebook, and GChat, while texting my mom that I should be home for dinner, and finding a couple of recipes I could make. This is certainly not the first time I have experienced such distraction, and apparently Poehler also struggles with it. But then, he who has never taken the clickbait should cast the first stone here.
It’s not simply that the modern cellphone demands our attention regardless of whether we want to give it to an infinitude of cat videos. It’s that cellphones can often fracture our communication due to their instantaneous nature. Poehler admits her quick text reactions to thoughts or prior texts often result in sending the wrong thing to the wrong person. After a series of embarrassing and hurtful situations, she now adheres to a policy that she will not text anything she isn’t comfortable with the whole world knowing. Because, unlike in real life where we can tell far more clearly that we are speaking to one person and not another, within the confines of a phone each of us is reduced to a name on a line, perhaps differentiated by a contact image.
Phones affect how we interact with others, as well as how others interact with us. They, coupled with social media, act as a kind of Magician’s Book like Lucy found in Narnia. Social media allows us to know what others think of us—first, as Poehler notes, in a flattering way through accumulating likes and followers. But popularity and notoriety come at a price: our phones also tell us what people think of us in a far more unrestrained and uncivilized manner than would occur in if we were physically present. From cyberbullying to the vitriol many female writers and journalists have experienced, to the legions of trolls that make men and women break down in tears, our phones give us an insight into anonymous—and so seemingly common—opinions unrestrained by civility.
Phones show us many things we would rather not see about ourselves; they also show us much about the world that perhaps we didn’t need to actually see. Though of course it is good to be informed of the evils of horrific acts of violence, such as the ISIS beheadings, when a Youtube clip is easily accessible on almost every major news site, the effect is gruesome. As Poehler notes, much of the violence we see online is out of context, a claim similar to that of Neil Postman in Amusing Ourselves to Death. Violent images are not the only damaging ones our phones allow us instantaneous access to; the Family Safe Media reports that 80% of 15-17 year olds have seen multiple instances of hardcore pornography. Though Poehler admits to enjoying the sort of porn Julianne Moore’s Esther recommends at the end of Don Jon, she at least notes that it can’t possibly be healthy for younger folks to have unlimited access to the kind and quantity of pornography currently available. In fact, she ultimately states that, “most of what my phone shows me is bad for my eyes. My eyes need a rest, spiritually and literally.”
Phones show us far more than we wanted to see, but they also distract us from the world around us. Kate Bryan discussed this problematic trend earlier in the year, reminding us that “when you’re looking down and your earbuds are plugged into your smartphone, you don’t know the chances you will miss.” Poehler herself once ruined a phone when she jumped in the pool to grab her son out who had fallen in. She remembers that while feeling glad she chose her child over her phone, she still felt devastated at losing her phone. She isn’t alone—as Pew found, 67% of cellphone owners check their phones even when it isn’t alerting them to incoming information.
And people die because of their phones. In 2012, a governmental study found that 421,000 people were injured in a crash resulting from a driver distracted by their cellphone, while 3,328 others died in a crash caused by cell phone distraction. Not only are we willing to risk injury or even death to reply to that text; thanks to increasing cloud-based technology, we can’t escape our phones even should we lose them. There is no reset button. Our phones are becoming essential to our person. Which is really creepy.
My boyfriend once observed that for most people, “a phone is the first thing they touch when they wake up and the last thing they touch before they fall asleep.” That struck me as incredibly true and extremely sad. Before phones, what used to hold that pride of place? Books, bibles, families, lovers. For most of us today, it is what Poehler describes as
A battery-charged rectangle of disappointment and possibility. It is a technological pacifier. I keep it beside me to make me feel less alone, unless I feel like making myself feel lonely. It can make me feel connected and unloved, ugly and important, sad and vindicated.
Pretty striking stuff. While reading this, I couldn’t help recalling Dave Egger’s The Circle, particularly when he wrote “no one’s forcing you to do this. You willingly tie yourself to these leashes. And you willingly become utterly socially autistic.”
Things aren’t perhaps that bad yet, but both Poehler and Egger’s critiques are relevant. Our phones are addicting; though I could cite any number of studies, the short film I Forgot My Phone says it far more clearly than any amount of statistics could. So, as with any critique of culture we are left asking “what now?” Well, Poehler rejects the idea of radical ludditism in favor of two healthier approaches. Firstly, we beat them (the phones) at their own game by using technology to promote good and positive things done by good and positive people. Poehler herself has done this through her Smart Girls at the Party initiative to celebrate “the curious girl, the nonfamous, the everyday warrior.” Secondly, “we believe in people, not machines” because in the end it is people who will be there for us when our batteries run out and our phones go missing.
Phones are a useful and potentially addicting tool, but they will only ever be a tool. We aren’t Pygmalion. As Poehler brilliantly demonstrated, phones are neither reality nor community—and they never will be. For all the good they can do, don’t allow them to replace real life. Go to a city and get lost for a bit. Have your mom, not Buzzfeed, teach you a recipe. And don’t just share stuff on Facebook—call your friends, or meet them for coffee, and talk about it. The most hilarious, wonderful, tragic, and magnificent things can be found in the world around us; if Poehler’s stories from her life tell me anything about how to live, it is that you don’t want to miss any of it. Real life? Yes please!
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