Andrew Weil Quotes

There's something really terrible about having your BlackBerry next to your bed or having your laptop in the living room when you're talking to someone. The biggest source of stress in my life is the screen, the blogging.

We're getting so pulled in by computers and technology, and our kids have their face in the computers all day. The human relationship is being diminished by this.

It's probably this way with a lot of professionals: At first the BlackBerry is a savior, because it makes you mobile, but then it becomes a curse, because you're at a restaurant and looking down at it under the table.

Our phones have created what I like to call SADD - Social Attention Deficit Disorder.

I don't like the fact people watch things on their phones and tablets, it kind of hurts my heart.

You see families at a restaurant and the kids are on the phone and the adults are on the phone. It's just a catastrophe.

Teenagers talk about the idea of having each other's 'full attention.' They grew up in a culture of distraction. They remember their parents were on cell phones when they were pushed on swings as toddlers. Now, their parents text at the dinner table and don't look up from their BlackBerry when they come for end-of-school day pickup.

If we allow our self-congratulatory adoration of technology to distract us from our own contact with each other, then somehow the original agenda has been lost.

Technology is notorious for engrossing people so much that they don't always focus on balance and enjoy life at the same time.

People live too much of their lives on email or the Internet or text messages these days. We're losing all of our communication skills.

I'm always wondering: Have all these time-saving devices actually saved us any time, or have they just created a million fetishes and obsessions that keep us from the quiet half hour we should be taking to sit and do nothing every day?

Ironically, while many of us spend hours every day using small mobile devices to increase our productivity and efficiency, interacting with these objects, even for short periods of time, might do just the opposite, reducing our assertiveness and undermining our productivity.

Almost every time I go to the ocean, I think about throwing my phone right into it. Sometimes, you pull that thing out of your pocket, you look at it, and you're like, 'What was I just going to do with this? Was I going to take a note? Was I going to check my email? Was I going to take a picture?'

I see a lot of moms and dads frustrated because their kids have their devices at the dinner table and they can't seem to get their attention as much as they used to.

Our attention spans have been reduced by the immediate gratification provided by smartphones and social media.

We're all severely addicted to our phones... it's not glamorous or always harrowing even, it's just damaging.

In my head, I'm a purist that doesn't require anything but a group of good friends and a bottle of wine. In reality, I'm co-dependent on my iPhone and fully conscious of the fact that my attention span is corroding.

Kids are so accustomed to technology that it's upsetting to watch them without their phones. They don't know what to do. Sometimes I feel like I'm like that, too - if I get my phone taken away because I'm grounded, I don't know what to do. So I just have to sit in my room and stare blankly at the ceiling.

I'd like to pretend to be all Olympian and above it, as if this is a phenomenon I'm observing from a great height, nothing to do with my own behavior at all - but the fact is I'm absolutely one of those people in the cafe staring at my phone.

The nerds provide the toys that distract the morons. So the nerds are sort of the new drug-dealers. We're the drug dealers of the 21st century because we provide all the brain candy for the mouth-breathers, for lack of a better word.

Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can't be good for you.

One thing about computers and iPhones is they're making people mentally lazy.

I sound like an old man when I talk about the Internet, but I am actually worried about what it's doing to our brains and our sense of connection.

I think that we're reducing who we are as human beings to these cell phones and these devices; now we don't even want to pick up a telephone to talk - we just text.

There are plenty of reasons to put our cellphones down now and then, not least the fact that incessantly checking them takes us out of the present moment and disrupts family dinners around the globe.