1. One time, I had a schoolmate which I eventually became friends on Facebook. We messaged each other as if we're so close, but when we met along the school's hallways, we unexpectedly looked away as if we really don’t know each other. I realized that we can just comfortably talk through Facebook.
2. Another one is when my family would eat out in a restaurant. As we sat down, I can observe most people in the restaurant would be busy interacting for a few minutes; catching up, take some photos together, and all of the sudden, everyone's silent. Why? because they're now busy uploading and updating their social media. Some would just casually look at their phone until their orders arrive.
3. It has been a common scenario for young students to play video games online. Some would play by a team in a computer shop, and some would just spend their day with their smartphones playing Mobile Legends and Clash of clans. I agree that these kinds of games are very addictive, which will then make these individuals facing their computers and smartphones for a whole day than interact with real people.
4. Alright, this one really broke my heart. We really celebrate special events in a very special way. We would even hire an event organizer and rent a fancy function hall just to celebrate the day [plus a photographer/videographer to capture every moment.]. Since it is a get-together event, it is expected for everyone to talk and do some catch ups. Let's say in a WEDDING, once the bride walks down in the aisle, all of the guests would stand up and witness her going to her groom. But in this generation, people would do something else. Most of them are taking out their phones to take a photo of the bride which is quite distracting. Can you even imagine walking down with full of smartphones facing you? Even in a birthday celebration, people are making sure to capture the best photo of the birthday celebrant blowing her candle. We can even ask the question "Who are the real guests here? These people or their smartphones?".
Have you witnessed these scenarios too?
A mobile phone has been one of the basic things that we must carry around all the time. Just like one of my college instructors told us before, mobile phones now are more of a need than a want. As our society becomes an advance village, we need it to communicate with other people.
According to an article in the Art Institute, early cell phones were just for talking. Gradually, features like voicemail were added, but the main purpose was talk. Eventually, cell phone manufacturers began to realize that they could integrate other technologies into their phone and expand its features. The earliest smartphones let users access email, and use the phone as a fax machine, pager, and address book. (2015)
The invention of mobile phones was to originally talk with someone on the other line. That is, therefore, to communicate much easier than by sending letters and have it delivered to the post office.
In a span of more than 40 years, from its very first portable mobile phone, the evolution and emergence of mobile phones boomed. From a thick regular antenna-built-in mobile phone to a thin-all-in-one smartphone. At first, only the people from a high-class family can purchase a mobile phone. But now, these mobile phones are being sold in the market for a very affordable price.
Now let's assume that most people owned a mobile phone, specifically a smartphone. This kind of mobile phone has a lot of features: You can message, call, surf, play, watch, listen, take pictures and navigate. Did this kind of invention make us connect more to the people, or disconnected us mainly from the whole world?
What did you realize when I shared my experiences earlier? Did the mobile phone really serve its main purpose in connecting and helping these people to communicate? Or did it completely malfunctioned and caused other people to prefer to stay at home and spend time with their technology?
Too much use of smartphones made us unconsciously unlearn our social skills, from an independent individual into a technology-dependent, from attending real parties into playing Dota in parties. Smartphones are supposed to help our life become much easier and faster. However, it made us into a dumb-dull-skill less individual.
Smartphones can already do anything for us. We can just say "Hey Siri/Google/[insert name]” and it can already send a message, call, take photos, research, play music and videos and even navigate. It turned out that we can now just comfortably ask the virtual mobile assistant rather than learning how to politely ask someone for help.
Why? It’s simple. Us humans have the mentality of “Since it can already do it, why do we need to still learn it?”. When we know that our phones have calculators, we can just stop learning math because something else can do the solving for us. When we know that we can call and text someone anytime, we do not need to make time for them personally. We even prefer to record every event of our lives through our phones, rather than witnessing it with our own eyes. We now cared to share everything on Facebook, or else we'll be called outdated beings.
This made the world an awkward place to live in. Since we already know that there is a smartphone that can do this and that for us, we stopped making effort for the people important for us, we stopped improving ourselves because we can already depend everything on these technologies.
Source:
Art Institute
uSwitch
Source:
Art Institute
uSwitch
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