CELLPHONES: With our eyes glued to our cellphone screens, we put ourselves and each other in danger.
By Amy Wang, Opinions Editor
Life moves faster than the updates on your Facebook home page. One moment you’re writing about how your day “totally sucked” and the next you hear a BANG! You look up, fingers hovering over the keyboard of your smartphone, just in time to see life leave the body of an innocent college student. All you can think is how could this happen? How could anyone let this happen? Surely someone should have seen a man pull out a gun!
Yet no one did last September, when 20-year-old Justin Valdez was randomly shot and killed on a train in San Francisco. Passengers just a few feet away from him were on their phones, completely disconnected from their surroundings until the ringing of a gunshot and the loss of a life broke through their cellular shield and dragged them back to reality.
The security footage of the incident reveals the killer displaying his .45-caliber handgun in plain sight several times, waving the weapon as if deciding which of the passengers would be his victim. Not only did the passengers’ distraction cost Valdez his life, but they also risked their own. The killer chose his victim at random; they all had an equal chance of being chosen to take the bullet.
This is not the first time that people busy on their cellphones have gotten in trouble because of their ignorance to their surroundings. Incidents range from humorous–a woman in a Pennsylvania mall fell into a fountain because she was too busy texting–to dangerous–a man almost walked into the path of a black bear while he was on his phone. While these accidents create funny, viral YouTube videos for us to share, they also reveal the dangers that cellphones users inflict upon themselves.
It can be hard to disconnect from your cellphone. Even I admit to walking around with my eyes glued to my cellphone when I’m walking to class alone (I’ll also confess to almost running into people because of it). However, there are places with greater danger risks where your eyes need to be especially focused on your surroundings, not your screen. In public areas, such as on subways or walking to your car on the other side of the parking lot, stay alert and aware of your surroundings. Attackers are more likely to assault those too engrossed in their cellphones than someone looking around, paying attention. They want easy, distracted targets they can catch off guard, not someone who can see them coming yards away, ready to call 911.
We always hear the same old “don’t text and drive” campaigns, yet we never hear anything about simply paying attention to our surroundings instead of letting our cellphones guide us aimlessly. We assume this is common sense, yet it is apparent from various instances in which simply texting and walking leads people into mishaps that society has lost any sense it had left to cellphones.
Regain control. An hour or two without checking your cellphone won’t hurt. Your Facebook status can wait until you get home; all that matters is that you make it that far in the first place.