In this medical business, for every person
who thinks some new finding is a “yin”, there’s another one who thinks it’s
really a “yang”.
Take this recent report about cell phone
use from a group of British psychologists which was presented at a meeting of
the British Psychological Society.
In this study based on testing more than
100 study subjects, the researchers reported that although most people who use
cell phones start off using them appropriately (for some reason, they concluded
that most people start using cell phones for business purposes; try telling
that to any 10- or 12-year-old texting her
friends endlessly; but that’s a small quibble about the findings), most
people soon end up being governed by their cell phones, that is, they
compulsively check their phones for messages, and the end up exhibiting
stress-related symptoms as a consequence of needing to be in touch all the time.
That, I suggest, is the yin interpretation
of these findings.
The yang comes from an American
psychologist who was asked to critique these findings and who said that she
didn’t really see that compulsively checking a cell phone or small was a bad
thing.
First, not only is it likely, she said,
that it’s basically people who are pre-destined to be more stressed who are also
those who end up allowing their cell phones to govern their lives (that’s
certainly true) but also, she said, the great thing about checking a cell phone
regularly means that we’re more “in touch” with the world (although if you ask
me, anyone who needs to check their cell phone or email every 5 minutes – and
there are so many people who do exactly that or equally annoying, set their
cell phones to beep as a new message comes through– are not really in “touch”
so much as they’re being tackled) and that we can also multi-task more (which
is just plain wrong, as anyone who has ever been behind a driver talking on a
cell phone and trying to drive at the same time – can’t be done well, folks).
Originally posted on the London Drugs Blog - January 12, 2012
