Navigating the suburban jungle of zombie smart phone users

I’ve had a couple of unusual encounters this spring while walking June and Lark, where people were paying more attention to their smart phone than their surrounding environment. I am old (curmudgeonly) enough to be really irritated by these encounters, so I thought I'd vent a bit here.

A few weeks ago I was walking Lark on our short “downtown and back” loop and we came across a woman in an SUV stopped at a stop sign, busily tapping away on her phone. I stopped, as I’ve taught all my dogs to stop and sit before crossing a street. I stared at the woman for a moment but she was oblivious to our presence. As it happened, her window was down, so I called out to her, “are you going to go or may I cross?” (which was a much more polite inquiry than what I was thinking). Startled, she looked up and said “sorry, go ahead”.  We stepped warily into the crosswalk and made our way across the street.

More recently I was walking June in a different neighborhood and we were gaining ground on a young boy walking two pugs (or pug mixes, I admit I didn't look too closely). June and I gave them a wide birth by stepping into someone's front yard, and then had to step further in as the dogs dragged the boy closer toward us, in large part because he was paying more attention to his phone than the dogs. We did manage to pass without a close encounter but it reminded me of the dangers of dividing your attention from the main task at hand. 

It may be fairly common knowledge now that people are not as efficient at multitasking as they think they are (Multitaskers bad at multitasking). Some information I've read suggests distractions in general are the problem, not smart phones specifically, and I don't disagree with this assessment. It seems the more fast paced our society becomes the more distractions of all types we face, and the more I see people unwilling or unable to simply live in the moment, but engaged elsewhere instead, often to the detriment of themselves and those around them.