Comprehensive Diagnostic Radiology

Today, cell phones and electronics completely dominate our world.  People have become totally dependent on all their electronic devices, from cell phones to communicate, to “Alexa”  and “Siri” to manage their lighting, air conditioning and even appliances.   Mankind just blindly follows the latest updates and allows electronic devices to completely control their lives and willingly become dependent on them for everything.   

It was in  2010 while at the airport  in Baltimore, Maryland when I became aware of the widespread iPhone use.  I was standing at the end of the Southwest Airlines counter with a cowboy and we were looking at every single person in line, they all were staring down at their cellphones.  He kind of winked at me and said “Can you believe this?”  We both acknowledge this was NOT normal human behavior.   

Looking at screens all day, be it computer, cell phone and tablet has become the norm.   Humans were meant to traverse the planes and forests, hunt game, raise their own food  and be outdoors. The human body was not meant to sit or stand  in front of screens all day. 

In high school my daughter’s cellphone was taken away by the teacher for a day.  She began to have physical withdrawal symptoms after not having her phone for 24 hours.  It does not take an ingestion of chemicals to acquire a dependency.   People can become physically dependent on their phone.  

As a radiologist I have been staring at screens for the past 40 years, long before every other job required sitting down and staring at screens.  I do believe that in the world we live in, a certain amount of screen dependency is required, we all depend on screens in one way or another.  Email has become a necessary in my profession, however, I still do not personally check email throughout the day, I am in the lucky position of having a life and personal assistant who can check email for me.  Texting, however, is not my favored form of communication.    I  enjoy talking to people in person  and I frequently engage people in conversations on the phone (usually from my landline).  I believe that  in order to compensate for this mandatory requirement,  I recommend trying to remove yourself from any other electronics as much as possible every day.  Get outside and exercise and enjoy the natural functions your body was meant to perform.

Because of the widespread dependence on technology, sites like “TikTok”  have shown people doing “TikTok” challenges (some of which have caused permanent damage and/or death.  The massive  number people who react, interact and  tend to respond similarly to the fabled  mass of lemmings. Critical thinking and thinking for ones selves seems to be rapidly disappearing from the human race. Hopefully, people will try to separate from technology as much as possible during the days to come and learn to think for themselves.