Driving Us Crazy

This week in Massachusetts, a teenager was sentenced to a minimum of one year in prison for causing an accident while texting that resulted in a death.  To underscore the severity of this crime, the judge also suspended the young man’s driver’s license for fifteen years.  For the past few years, it has been illegal in Massachusetts for drivers under the age of 18 to use their cell phones while driving, whether for voice or text.  Nonetheless, in a recent study, over 42% of high school aged drivers admitted that they text while driving.

Not so long ago, mobile telephone technology was a welcome relief for business commuters.  I remember entering the work force in the San Francisco Bay Area, working at the flagship of a hospital system across the Bay in Berkeley.  I would commonly call my husband to let him know when I was leaving the office, but the time spent on the road was essentially non-productive downtime.  My commute over the Bay Bridge could take between 30 and 90 minutes depending on a number of factors, including the time I left, the day of the week, whether the Oakland As or San Francisco Giants had home games, and just plain dumb luck.  I remember spending endless intervals of my life staring at the giant rivets holding the bridge together, fearful that I would be sitting there when “the big one” hit.  Ironically, it was that very spot where a section of that bridge collapsed during the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989.

In those days, I got home when I got home.  If my husband had pressing business to discuss, or there was a disturbing headline on the evening news, it kept until I arrived.  If my parents called and no one was home, they left a message on a machine to be picked up and returned later.  If my husband was suddenly called back to perform emergency surgery, his absence would be self-evident at home reinforced with either a note or a recorded message.

We were living in Atlanta when “portable car phones” (we did not start calling them cells or mobiles until later) became available and affordable.  By then, we had a small son in daycare.  Between our two demanding careers, it took tag teaming to facilitate the drop offs and pickups at the appropriate times.  We lived very close to my husband’s office, yet painfully far from my own.  Between our home and my office were some of the worst traffic bottlenecks in America.  Getting on the highway each evening was like being sent off into the jungle without a rifle; you never knew if you would emerge unscathed.  Even though I technically had a “reverse commute,” the ten mile trip could take as long as two hours if I hit it at peak rush hour.  I was constantly experimenting with surface roads through various neighborhoods—anything to cut 5 or ten minutes off my auto-imprisonment.  No matter what I tried, I was constantly arriving late at daycare, finding my son waiting anxiously while the owners looked disparagingly upon my apologetic countenance.

One year on my birthday, my husband left the house for work and then called me a few minutes later.  I was confused, having clearly heard the gears shift on his car as he backed out the driveway, his preferred “talk radio” station blaring loudly enough to be audible from inside the house.  “How are you calling me?” I asked, totally baffled.  “I am calling from your new car phone,” he announced proudly.  “Now you will be able to call when you cannot get to daycare in time.”  He drove back into the driveway and installed the clumsy bag under the driver’s seat in my car, extending the handpiece on its coiled tether so it was within reach.  The power chord attached in the lighter socket—a feature I had thought to be superfluous previously but now was thrilled to have on board.

As young parents, the car phone capability was a marvelous boon to our lifestyle, relieving an element of stress from our professionally-strained existence.  It eliminated the black hole of commuting time and opened up a new channel of communication with my young children when I could not be present.  Even after working late, or entertaining clients, I could still say goodnight to my kids.  For many years, because the phone was essentially a feature of my car (and pay-per-use), it was used exclusively for my convenience, never altering our life at home.  Family members and work colleagues were not privy to the number, so there was no question of using it as a tracking device.  Even after I upgraded to a more portable device—one that would fit comfortably in my purse or pocket—I continued to associate its use with driving, leaving it in the car while working, shopping, or eating dinner with my family.

Somehow, the convenience of portable communication went dreadfully wrong.  Telephones became multi-tasking appliances, packing more technological punch into a half-inch-thick pocket liner than the room-sized computers my father used to market to the government.   The predominant communication pathway is no longer a telephone call at all.  Text-based communication has replaced real-time speak with asynchronous messaging, a phenomenon that carries at least one serious unintended consequence.   People now communicate in a vacuum, isolated from eye contact, gestures, inflection, immediate response, and other social cues that infuse messages with meaning.  In the process, a whole generation of young people is becoming ill-equipped to deal with each other, failing to develop the edits and self-restraints that characterize maturity.  Conversation has been replaced by reactions, acronyms, and emoticons—raw thought waves transmitting sharp, brief, unsanitized utterances.

It gets worse.  As techno-giants merged capabilities into a single platform, we failed to enforce a sharp line of demarcation between necessary communication and discretionary entertainment.  We also failed to recognize in time the effect that the seemingly benign yet constant stimulation would have on young brains.  Like Pavlov’s dogs, our youth now require the response they have been conditioned to receive, unable to survive the classroom, or dinner, or a movie without a fix.  There is nothing so isolating and anxiety-provoking to a teenager than unplugging oneself from a world of social inclusion.  It is as unlikely to happen as astronauts’ severing their ties to mission control.   So while we, as parents, allowed or encouraged our kids to keep a cell phone on board “for emergencies,” we also enabled one of the greatest dangers facing young people today.  With our eyes wide open, we have made the world an infinitely more dangerous place.

Tomorrow's blog:  When Left is Right