My younger brother Nick, a junior at St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wis., doesn't have his own computer, and he doesn't have a cell phone.
If you just gasped or asked yourself, "Is something wrong with him?" you just had the typical response people have to learning this.
It's annoying. I can't get a hold of him whenever I want, and sometimes, I go weeks or a month without talking to him. It is pretty normal for my mom to call me and say, "Have you heard from Nick? I hope he's alive." I usually respond with, "Nope, but keep your fingers crossed, maybe we'll hear from him in the next few weeks."
As someone who likes to communicate and know what's happening in the lives of friends and family, I often curse my brother for not buying into today's technology. However, when I walked right into a newspaper stand the other day on the way to class, I envied his independence from technology, while nearby observers snickered in my direction.
You see, I was texting. Apparently, it is a dangerous thing to do on the streets. Forget the threat of cancer from cell phone radiation, the distraction provided by text messages and e-mailing on cell phones is a real health hazard.
The American College of Emergency Physicians released a warning earlier this year to refrain from text messaging while "walking, skating, riding a bicycle and driving," because doctors have been "noticing a rise in injuries and deaths related to sending text messages at inappropriate times."
A tragic example occured on Sept. 12 when a Los Angeles train engineer was said to have been texting when the commuter train he was conducting collided with a freight train, killing 25 people.
A Time magazine article this spring featured a story about Living Streets, a charity dedicated to making cities more pedestrian-friendly, and 118118, a British directory assistance company, that teamed up to put protective pads around lampposts on a street in London. Then they filmed pedestrians walking and texting, including a few who were saved from some bruises by the pads.
While the pads were mostly a publicity stunt, they make a point with their absurdity. Why are we obsessed with our cell phones to the point of risking injury or to the point of allowing the devices from keeping us from experiencing the happenings around us? The answer is not to pad every object on the street — it's to watch where we're going.
A recent study done by Osterman Research and Neverfail, an Austin, Texas-based software company, found 70 percent of adults have texted while driving. In addition, the study found that 79 percent of adults have texted while in the bathroom, 18 percent have texted at a wedding, 16 percent during a funeral and 11 percent while engaging in "intimate behavior."
What?!?
These statistics make me question what some people, including myself, are thinking.
Is it that important to be text messaging while paying tribute to a loved one who has just passed away? Why send a text message when we could communicate with the person right next to us? Why risk killing or injuring ourselves by messaging while driving when we could wait a few minutes to do it? At times, it's just downright rude.
Everywhere I look on campus I see people texting, typing and talking on cell phones. I do it too. I even have a phone that flips out into a full keyboard for texting efficiency.
But maybe it's time for us to take a step back, look where we're going as we walk and remember what it is like to walk down the street and enjoy the company of those around us.
Cell phones are putting us at risk of injury, but also at risk of missing out on what is happening close by. Maybe my brother is better off than most of us. Too bad I can't get a hold of him to let him know.