Some technology has made us better. Examples: The printing press, pasteurization, instant replay, beef jerky, etc. For every polio vaccine, however, there’s a case where technology backfires. My two favorite examples: 1) Automated phone trees that take twenty minutes to navigate; and 2) Automated sinks, the infrared kind, the ones that make washing your hands seem like the Physical Challenge on a game show.
But I was wrong. Way wrong. A just-released poll highlights a more pernicious problem: we’re too plugged in.
According to the findings from PC Tools, almost a quarter of Americans (22%) think it’s perfectly acceptable to be plugged in-via iPhones, BlackBerries, Droids-during sex.
True, on the one hand, in any poll or breakdown, a certain percentage is just plain batshit crazy. (If you ask people how they like their cereal, the weirdo-demographic of 22% will say that they don’t use milk.) But still. Even with that caveat, this is insane. Email during sex? Mid-coital Facebook? The only PDA that should happen during sex is the old school meaning of the acronym, Public Display of Affection, and should mean something like, say, bonking in a cab. (See: Don Draper.)
See also: The Best (Well, Only) Honeymoon Sex Of Your Life
Sex is just the tip of the iceberg. Some other findings from the PC Tools poll:
29% think it’s okay to be plugged in during the honeymoon.
6% – Wedding
41% – Dinner at home with family or friends
26% – Expensive restaurant
(Off-topic, but of note: The survey, which was sponsored by PC Tools to help spread awareness of internet security, also found that 12% of people would rather get a colonoscopy than clear their computer’s registry. Wow. Anyways.)
See also: Honeymoon Packing Checklist
We’ve become a culture of twitchers. I do it. Everyone does it. We constantly take our phone from our pocket and check for that all-important new email… even when we’re not expecting an important email. We feel naked if we forget our phone. We check Facebook in the bathroom. When we get out of a movie theater, we race to turn our phone back on, panicked, wondering what we’ve missed.
I’m a realist. I don’t expect us all to suddenly go offline, ditch our iPhones and start writing letters, but please, for starters, let’s put away the Twitter during sex.
