The other day I saw a girl looking at her phone…while riding her bike! Don’t kids have real childhoods anymore? Using that thing we used to call an imagination?! As troubling as this is for the future of society it’s actually a real problem right now as well with people dying or getting injured all the time because they aren’t paying attention to their surroundings. Which is why Google is now rolling out alerts that detect if you’re using your phone while walking and then warn you to pay more attention.
Futurism explains:
“Android smartphones are about to start nagging users to pay attention and watch where they’re going when they detect that they’re texting or scrolling while walking.
The new — and optional — warnings have already started to roll out in beta form to some Pixel phones through Android’s Digital Wellbeing service, according to The Verge. Google has yet to clarify much more about the rollout, but it’s likely that more phones with Digital Wellbeing will also see the pedestrian warnings soon as well.
It seems a little goofy to have your phone warn you against using your phone while walking around, but thousands of pedestrians die every year, 9to5Google reports, so the occasional alert reminding people to ‘stay alert’ or ‘look up’ wouldn’t be the worst interruption to your on-the-go doom scrolling. And given that a Japanese city actually banned phone use while walking, it’s not the most out-there idea in the world.”
And while I can see this being annoying if you’re using your phone while moving for a practical reason – like turn by turn directions – it also could wind up being a life saver. Plus, shouldn’t we want to pay more attention to real life anyway? There may be things worth checking out in your vicinity, like I don’t know, the love of your life, the opening of a new restaurant, a funny people watching moment, a crime unfolding that you could be a witness to or stop from happening, a sign from God, a chance encounter with an old acquittance that leads to a job opportunity, obstacles that could kill or maim you, money that someone else dropped on the floor while they were looking at their phone, etc. Plenty of reasons to stop and smell the proverbial roses!
![Texting While Walking Is Sending People to the Emergency Room | Fortune](https://content.fortune.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/gettyimages-507988140.jpg)
Our phones may soon alert us when we’re looking at them while walking.
Leave a comment