How to stop blue face addiction with a game?
A blueface is someone who stares at their mobile phone, creating a blue glow over their faces. You often see this in cafes with friends next to each other, at meetings with colleagues or some other social event which has become rather anti-social. Some people are just plain addicted to their mobile phones, and as such have disregarded social impoliteness that stuffing your face into a small device, when others are present and in a conversation.
The Game System
This simple game combines a bit of crowd sourced building, and a negative feedback system to discourage the use of a mobile phone when in a social gathering. Everyone takes out their mobile phones and begins to stack them on top of each other. Making a towering tower of telecommunication. It's a fun bit to construct a tower of mobiles, and not have it fall over.
Game Rules
The rules of the game are simple. Don't grab your phone. If you grab your phone, there is a penalty. The group decides what the penalty will be beforehand. At a cafe with friends, the penalty could be to buy the group a round of drinks. In a meeting, any number of work related penalties such as cleaning or overtime work can be a penalty. Whatever it is the group must accept the penalty beforehand.
Effect
There are a number of different systems at play here to reduce the overall usage of mobiles in social situations. There is the negative social feedback which keeps most of us from acting out in a group. Because the group decides the rules, and everyone is watching, certain parts of our brain that formed back in the cave days trigger and we do not want to fail in the eyes of the group. Secondly, we see the phones stacked on top of each other. There is no easy way to remove one of the phones, without all them tumbling to the ground. This makes a great feedback loop to enforce the mental image of the entire group fails when the phones knock over. It's a lot like Jenga, and there is no stealthy way to remove a phone in this way, unless you are a ninja and your phone is on the top.
Try the game out in your social group and see how it plays. It might remind you a bit of the early 90's, back before everyone had a mobile phone.
