Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea discussed phones and social media in a new interview with Kevin Klein.
“I just felt this subtle addiction where I would be looking at [Twitter], picking up my phone and looking at it to see what it said. It’s just a ridiculous way to spend time. Also the weird subtle psychological thing of, you think of a smart funny thing to say, ‘Let me tweet that, because that’s a good tweet.’ I think I was a pretty good tweeter, but I just don’t think it’s healthy, at least for me anyways.
People’s attention spans seem to be really declining, and their ability to just get into things without feeling that you have to look at your phone instead of getting into listening to a record, looking at a painting, reading a book, or watching a sporting event, all these beautiful things that people do, and we can’t look at them or listen to them without checking our phone every 5 seconds to validate our existence on the earth, it’s sort of a sad state of affairs, so I’ve decide to disengage from that.”
He also discussed smart phones at concerts.
“It’s the number one challenge of being a human being, if you want to be a great human being, you have to be present. That’s the whole deal, that’s the entire deal, everything.”
“I say throw your phone in the garbage, come and listen to music and enjoy the show, and let’s do something beautiful together. When we’re playing a concert, the audience and us, we’re all working together to try and create this moment of magic.”
He later added, “I’m just saying this is our night, this is our time, we’re all here together to do this, and you’re worried about your phone? All that stuff man.”
