According to a recent study held in January 2016, approximately 2.3 billion people are using smart phone which accounts to more than 30% of total 7.3 billion inhabitants on earth. Among variety of available apps on smart phones, social media tools like twitter, WhatsApp, Linkedin, Instagram and online games etc are the ones where majority of people spend their time. An average user spent more than 5 hours in a day on their smartphone especially Facebook in the overall social media application space. Excess use of smartphones for everything and Interactions using these social applications has both noble and evil effects. Personally, I believe there is a very thin line between using these tools for majority of your day to day operations and being slaves to the technology. Not before long, one instance in my life inspired me for a thought on this issue and here are some points that may prove to be a real eye opener for all of us. So let’s ask ourselves:
- Am I being online 24 hours a day on my smartphone or being available on demand whenever required to someone when needed?
- How much time I am spending on my smartphone for some real cause and not doing Facebook, WhatsApp or gaming?
- Am I consuming Gigabytes of internet bandwidth on my smartphone(s), laptop(s), Smart TV(s) or am I really using this time, money and efforts to be socialize by meeting people, visiting relatives, talking to family members and understand their real needs?
- Am I limited to spending much of my time on watching some good informative videos and sharing only or am I watching, learning and implementing a message out of these videos, PPTs or other good articles?
- Am I still looking for directions to reach to my favourite destinations where I had been multiple times or I remember my favourite destinations?
- Am I texting a birthday, anniversary or other important event wishes to my friends, relatives and other knowns or am I personally visiting to these family and friends and be a part of their happiness or at least calling them on these days to make them feel important?
- Am I on my phone texting someone, playing game, checking emails, or doing other stuff when I am in a public gathering or I am talking to real people surrounding me (This is really the most important point I feel)?
- Am I on my smartphone when my kids are with me or I am just busy watching some news feeds on my smart phone, playing my favourite game and using WhatsApp, Facebook etc?
- When was the last time when I helped someone in need or I am just being sad looking something on a social media and doing nothing but share or like the post?
- Am I still searching a mobile phonebook to look for a contact number or I remember number of at least my closest ones?
- Am I still going to the market to make my day to day expense and get a chance to speak to unknown people and understand them or I am just purchasing everything on my smartphone applications?
- Am I a part of those groups of people who without any research share the contents which is actually a hoax. This becomes more important for the posts that spread hatred contents?
There are many examples that can be quoted here. The only point I want to make here is that we need to see if we are being addicted to the technology or we are really living a decent social life in the era of smartphones. We definitely need to stop being addictive to smartphone revolution before this becomes an incurable decease. Let’s do some introspection and ask ourselves where we are heading and what corrective actions can we take to make our life good.
