Phone Addiction? Be Safe Out There.

One of these weeks, the weather on Tuesday will be as nice as the weather on Monday.  But not this week.

We continue to meet up at the normal time and place and get in our miles.  See you there?

This weekend is a busy one for TRYers.  On Saturday, the Making Tracks for Celiacs 5k cross country run or 1 mile walk is at Jamesville Beach county park.  Let me know if you have questions about that.  I'm hoping a few of you can join in.  On Sunday, it's the Mountain Goat Run throughout the city of Syracuse.  And after that, it's Star Wars Day at the Syracuse Chiefs.  (Much to do, there is.)

Sometimes a common theme pops up in my various sources for information and I decide to share it whether it truly has to do with running or not.  This has to do with life.  And since most TRYers are in fact alive, despite what this years turnout most weeks would indicate, I feel it will be of interest to everyone.

In the last couple weeks I've stumbled across 3 unique takes on cell phone addiction.

A team of students at SU have won a couple competitions and are in the process of funding "an antisocial media app".  Which is ironic, don't you think?  To get an app for your phone that rewards you to not use your phone?  Read the article, and watch the quick embedded video.  It's interesting to think about.  Has our phone use gone too far?  I know I'm bad.  But how much worse are people 15-20 years younger than me?  A couple of the quotes in the article are fascinating.

Should we enforce a no phone use rule during our post TRY outings?  Or emphasize that they can only be used at a bare minimum for life essentials only?  (You know, for looking up urban dictionary definitions?  The real "hawkward" is still languishing in third place.  :-(

My (first) wife sent me this NPR article about how using your phone too much in front of your children leads to behavior issues.  (In the children.)  Really?  They admit the study was not at all scientific, but since following families around Walmart must have been beneath them, they observed families at fast food restaurants and noted more phone usage led to children acting out more.  Well before this reading, me and my (first) wife made some guidelines for when we can and cannot pull out our phones, but this made us re-consider that...how much phone use should we do in front of impressionable youngsters?  Yes, I am the bigger culprit of the two of us, but Joseph is rightfully scared of the back of my hand and mostly leaves me be.

Lastly, and very seriously, a woman in North Carolina died in a car accident right after updating her Facebook status.  Read the article if you want to, but the takeaway is that during the investigation into the crash they found a exceedingly trivial Facebook update (and honestly, which ones aren't trivial?) had been made within the last minute.  They also found that this driver had a habit of posting selfies while she was driving.  Really?  Is this what the world has come to?  It's scary that we have to share the road with drivers like this while we are driving.  But what about when we are running on the side of the road?  Or for you bikers, for all those miles you put in while sharing the lane with drivers?  Be careful out there and extra alert. Reconsider wearing headphones while you run on shared roads.  (Save the music for when you are safely running in local parks.)  Assume that the oncoming car is not fully paying attention to their driving.  We have a half generation of drivers out there now from the "low attention span" generation.  That's scary enough to make a status update about:

#suebrokethelatestgeneration