Apropos your cover story on smartphones (That Ping In Your Head, Apr 13). I teach youngsters and am witness to a remarkable deterioration in the quality of young people. They do not know basic English, lack good communication skills and speak in generalities when asked about anything. They live and grow, but like vegetables. The smartphone has taken a heavy toll. Soon, humans will evolve smaller brains and larger thumbs as they remain addled as ever.
Dinesh Kumar, Chandigarh
If the need to remember becomes obsolete, remembering itself becomes a half-hearted activity. The sensational stays in the mind, not the essential.
Anwaar, Dallas
A couple of dumb and dumber life examples: I used to remember many phone numbers by heart, but now don’t even remember my landline number. Likewise, driving and asking for directions was fun—you met different people, sometimes it was frustrating, but it was always engaging. But in the age of Google maps, we’ve lost it. We are moving away from real people towards ‘virtual’ ones. And then we call it being ‘social’.
R. Ramakrishna, on e-mail
Everywhere I see youngsters with their ears shut out to the world, the new generation freaks. Do they even use their thinking faculties?
M.K. Somanatha Panicker, Cherthala
We lived peacefully and worked efficiently even when a landline was rare. So it boils down to how much is too much for us.
Bal Govind, Noida
Cellphonism has turned the captive generation of today into social recluses, with compromised intelligence and little analytical capability.
George Jacob, Kochi
