Peter Jones

Plutarch on smartphone addiction

The essayist was ahead of us on the seduction of distractions

(Photo: Carla Miller) 
issue 26 July 2014

Adults, we are told, as much as children, become gibbering wrecks if deprived of their mobiles or iPhones for more than 15 seconds. The 2nd-century ad essayist Plutarch foresaw the problem.

In his essay ‘On being a busybody’, Plutarch takes a very strict line on man’s desire to be up to date on every last piece of news and gossip, especially what is ‘hot and fresh’ and, most important of all, scandalous. Joyful occasions — weddings and such like — are of no interest. Country life is even worse, ‘since they find the peace and quiet unendurable’. It is ‘adulteries, seductions, family quarrels, lawsuits’ that a man wants, or if forced to be in the country, information about whether his neighbour’s cattle have died, or his wine oxidised. It is only a good haul of disasters and difficulties that will satisfy a man, enabling him to rejoice at other people’s misfortunes (Greeks too had a word for Schadenfreude).

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