“The vacuum cleaner spied, the headphones decided”: the main gadgets that drive us crazy are named

Over the past couple of years, artificial intelligence has confidently stepped forward – but sometimes it seriously seems that under its stormy onslaught the intelligence given to us by nature is meekly retreating back. This is especially true for “zoomers” (the so-called generation Z, born from 1996 to 2010).

“My 24-year-old daughter is hysterical and swallows pills,” the girl’s mother asks a psychologist for help. – You see, the headphones found worms on her.

Retelling the client’s appeal, psychologist Andrei Tyurenkov admits that at that second he was thinking, isn’t it primarily the mother herself who needs mental help?!

“Fortunately, she immediately clarified her strange statement,” the psychologist shares. – She said that for her birthday, her friends gave her daughter headphones with a clinical examination function – a comprehensive “checkout” of the whole body for hidden diseases. They gave it for a reason, but with subtext, since the birthday girl is very suspicious and always “finds” various sores. Friends thought to calm down the birthday girl with a gift, but instead the headphones found worms on her right on her birthday. And the holiday turned into hysteria. So the mother didn’t know how to help her.

– Can headphones detect worms?! And how can this be helped?

“In this case, this is even a good thing,” emphasizes psychologist Andrei Tyurenkov, “as it became a timely signal that the girl is not just suspicious, but a potential hypochondriac (a person who is constantly afraid of getting sick with something – Auth.). Not everyone knows that the most dangerous period of life for the psyche is from 14 to 25, when there is continuous stress: final and entrance exams, first love, teenage tossing, conscription, early pregnancies and marriages, etc. Of course, it will not be possible to avoid all this. This means we need to patiently educate people on why they shouldn’t trust all kinds of headphones. And how to determine which diseases you are really at risk for, since it doesn’t happen to everyone at once.

– And how?

– It’s very simple, get a medical examination at a regular clinic at your place of residence. Although headphones that can monitor the health status of their owner do exist: they are equipped with sensors that measure pulse, saturation, blood pressure, calories, etc. Initially, they were addressed to fitness enthusiasts, but in Russia they “went to the people.” But people, especially young people, do not understand that headphones, no matter how cool they are, are not a medical device, but just home appliances. They can warn of possible health problems by constantly flashing red alarmingly on certain indicators, but nothing more. They cannot make a diagnosis; for this they need a living doctor.

– But how could they find the worms?

– I assume that this is a type of gadget that can compare and analyze calorie consumption in relation to their consumption and body weight. Simply put, if someone eats a high-calorie diet, exercises little, but is losing weight, the headphones will assume that this person has helminths, which will be reported via text message to the phone. And given the suggestibility of Russian “buzzers” and their boundless trust in gadgets, such devices threaten us with an epidemic of hypochondria among those under 30.

A study of the issue shows that the problem of “who to believe – a person or a gadget?” Today, young people have a really serious problem, not only in terms of health, but also in their personal lives.

“My friend Sonya’s wedding is scheduled for October, but she and her fiancé Yegor have already moved in together,” says the 23-year-old Muscovite. – And in September it’s Sonya’s birthday, the groom gave her a vacuum cleaner! My girlfriends and I were indignant, but Sonya justified Yegor by saying that, they say, this is not just a vacuum cleaner, but a robot, you can even launch it remotely via your phone if, say, guests unexpectedly show up, and make live broadcasts to monitor how he is doing cleaned up. She began to demonstrate to us, we were just sitting in a cafe, she connected via a smartphone to the camera of her miracle vacuum cleaner, and she just showed that Yegor brought his ex to their apartment…

The group of ladies immediately began to think about how they could also keep track of their loved one who was left at home, because there are a lot of options – through a dog collar with a built-in camera, through a remote “webnanny” for babies, through a camera to monitor hired household staff. And one admitted that just for these purposes, when she leaves, she always leaves the car DVR turned on on the closet. Otherwise, she has a full work week, and her husband is remote, who knows what he’s doing there in her absence?!

“Well, it’s unlikely that the girl will go to court with this,” lawyer Denis Dvorzhetsky answers the question whether the matter is not punishable by law. “And if it’s, so to speak, for internal family use, then no one cares.” But if someone, on the basis of a video or audio obtained like this, begins to demand something from his half through the court, the court will not consider such a recording as evidence due to the method of obtaining it.