Your phone listens to you. Yes, this is a conspiracy theory, but just hear me out. I love my phone more than most; I can’t even survive without it for, like, a day. But, in the pursuit of excellence, we should probably all stop using our phones as much as we do. We all make jokes about the “FBI guy” watching us, but perhaps it’s more true than we think it is.
Have you ever been scrolling through Instagram and seen an ad for something? But, not just any thing, something you were just talking with your friends about? Well, I have–on many occasions, in fact, though I feel like this is just common knowledge at this point. Some people even put tape over their webcams because they are worried about being watched.
I like to maintain a certain level of trust in our government, but I truly believe our phones are like personal little listening devices which are tapped into our lives.
There are times when I watch a video on YouTube and then I switch to using Instagram, and I see ads for something I was watching. Hell, sometimes I do so much as think about something and an ad appears for it on Instagram. I never even talked about it! It is a little creepy. I’m sure these experiences are shared by many, if not all of you. I feel a little like my privacy is a little violated, but also, I think it is kind of nice at times.
I know, crazy right? I’m a heretic. However, think about how much more streamlined our experience on the internet has become because of things like this. It’s a well known fact that the ads that appear on websites are drawn from our browsing history, which may or may not be a good thing, but I would much rather see ads for shoes than other, more questionable ads.
Our phones, and the systems which control them, are well suited to our lives. They have become tuned into the things we like, and can to operate most efficiently for our daily use. I think it’s unnerving at times, but also, I enjoy it. Obviously the people doing this don’t care about me individually, but it shows that they might care about the general experience of the users of their phones.
In a world of climate change, anti-vaxxers and bigotry, I’m much less concerned about what my phone is doing than other problems.
Obviously there is no empirical evidence to prove the claims I am making about our phones, but I feel that enough of us likely have shared this experience that we can all agree on it.
In many ways, our phone is doing these things for us. They provide us with content that we previously enjoyed. It isn’t a big part of my life on a grander scale. And, who cares if the government knows that I like cat videos or weird graphic tee shirts? Trust your phones, they are here to serve you.