Not-So-Smart Phone

They have fast become an addiction in recent years; a gadget we can't seem to step outside without, get panic attacks when we can't feel it in our pocket and rarely leave out of our hands.

Can we even remember a time without a smartphone; when Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook or Twitter didn’t exist? When you actually had to sit and talk to people without constantly glancing down at your phone for fear you might miss something.

We have become obsessed with our phones and have blurred the line between needing and wanting. We have become addicted, rude, disrespectful and clearly lack any kind of self-control. 

Is it really too much to ask to leave the bloody phone down when someone is trying to have a conversation with you?

Here are four of the most annoying things I've noticed...

Using your phone when someone is talking to you

This is possibly one of my biggest pet peeves. There is absolutely nothing worse than someone scrolling through their news feed while you are trying to have a conversation with them. They are oblivious to what they're doing and it's obvious they're not interested in one word you have to say so, what's the point? Seriously. If you’re going to be that anti-social why do you bother hang out with real life people where, God forbid, you might be subject to real life interaction?

Checking your phone every two seconds

Now don’t get me wrong, smartphones are essential for reminders, alarm clocks and to-do lists but the endless stream of notifications can also be annoying. A status update from Facebook or a notification from Pinterest to tell you you have a new follower are hardly essential updates or justify the need for you to check your phone every two seconds. As well as the ‘ping’ noise becoming super annoying, looking at your phone all the time is anti-social, distracting and can prevent you actually living in the real world.

Bringing your phone everywhere

Seeing people out walking with their phones yapping or texting away irks me like no other. Isn’t one of the main purposes of exercise to relieve stress and disconnect from the world for half an hour? As well as that how many times have we all had someone bang into us because they weren’t looking where they were going because they were too busy with their mobile phones? Just leave the phone at home already!

Using your phone when dealing with a cashier

Working in a shop for the last few years I have dealt with this one too many times. Would you wait in line then as soon as you get to the top of the queue wait a little bit longer while the person serving you takes a call or answers back a text message? I doubt it. Newsflash! You are not the only person in the queue. Other people are waiting, I have a million and one other things to do than wait for you to finish your conversation so stop being ignorant and get off the phone.



Photos c/o: Wordpress, hercampus.com and greenbot.com 

When social media becomes antisocial...

It’s the first thing I do in the morning and it’s the last thing I do at night. Most of the time I don’t want to do it but I fall victim to the temptation. I’m an addict.

It’s like every drug; there are highs and there are lows. Sometimes I feel good after doing it and sometimes, more often than not, I’m left with a dull, empty feeling, and I wish I never bothered with it.

But there’s no escaping it, and that makes it hard to quit. The whole world is consumed with it. Social media is my drug and I am an addict.

Yet I’m not alone; far from it in fact. The latest social media statistics show more and more people are signing up and getting involved in the cyber world. What started out as a low key college project for one American college student is now the biggest social media platform with 1.28 billion monthly active users on Facebook. Twitter has also seen a boost in popularity in the last few years as more and more journalists see it as a strong platform for breaking news stories. The site now has 255 million active viewers and an average of 500 million tweets are sent everyday. 78% of Twitter’s active users are on mobile and almost half of these users tweet at least once a day.

Snapchat is the latest phenomenon to grab the attention of social media users. The photo messaging application, initially released in 2011, now has 30 million monthly active users, with an average of 400 million snapchats being sent every day. Similarly Instagram, another online mobile photo-sharing app, has also gained popularity in the past year. To date, over 20 billion photos have been shared on the site and 23% of teenagers consider it their favourite social network.

So how do we pull ourselves away from our phones and laptops? For many people it’s not as easy as just logging out. Most college students have a class Facebook page where they get information on whether a class is on or not or what topics people are studying for a certain exams. By not having a Facebook page you miss out on some important information. Likewise, your actual social life could also be missing out if you deactivate your Facebook page. Gone are the days of sending out handwritten invitations. Today people are invited through the events calendar on Facebook. So, if you don’t have a page you might not get the memo! 

For journalists it’s even harder. In an age where print media is declining, digital and social media is where we now look to. So how do we limit the amount of time we spend online when that’s where we now have to look to for breaking news, current affairs and all the latest happenings from around the world? As a journalist I find it difficult to distance myself from social media when it’s one of our main sources of information. But at the same time I have to wonder at what cost are we simplifying our lives by communicating through such sites?

And that’s maybe where the addiction starts. You say you’re just going to log on for a minute and check if there’s anything important you need to know and suddenly, you’ve wasted two hours scrolling through your news feed. It’s so easy to get addicted to looking at other people’s lives, both celebrities and people you actually know. They look like they’re living the dream and having a great time with all their statuses, photos and snapchats…but are they really? The problem with social media sites is that people only show the good side of everything they’re doing. So, the next time you get jealous while creeping on someone else’s Facebook, Instagram or whatever it may be, just remember; they may not be having as good a time as you think.

 

But most of us can’t resist and we all crave attention in some way, shape or form. By posting on

social media networks we satisfy that craving when we get a ‘like’ on our new profile picture, a retweet on Twitter, or a match on Tinder. We are a world that has become dependent on social media in order to feel good about ourselves and that’s not healthy.

Pubs and nightclubs, once full of people actually talking to each other, are now full of people glancing at their phones every two minutes, taking pictures on snapchat or creeping on Facebook. I have decided to make a conscious effort to distance myself from social media when I am on a night out or in the company of others. It’s just not necessary most of the time. I’m gonna try that old fashioned thing called talking. It can’t be that hard…can it?