21 Apr 2013

Why We Are Silent Now...


Ramya had gone to a restaurant with her friend. On the adjacent table sat 6 guys who were barely conversing. Strange! Why? They were busy with their mobile phones. One must have been playing Temple Run, one must have been on WhatsApp, one on Facebook, one tweeting, and so on.

Silence engulfs a lot of gatherings these days. We’re lost in our smart phones connecting with people who are not in front of us and neglecting those who are. We prefer WhatsApp and Facebook chats to face – to – face conversations. We inform our friends of changes in our lives via Facebook instead of phone calls. “You didn’t know about it? I put it up on Facebook.”

I’ve been keeping a low profile on the web lately. So a friend called and asked “Where are you these days? You’re not tweeting, no Facebook updates, no blog articles, no WhatsApp messages...” “Well, you should’ve called,” was my response. “Aah! That slipped my mind,” he sheepishly grinned.
Smart phones were meant to supplement us, just like PPTs are meant to supplement our presentations. But just like we let PPTs drive our presentations, we let smart phones control our lives. Internet connections must be on until the battery runs low; switching off our phones feels like a bigger catastrophe than 21st December 2012; most ads are now about mobile phones; we’ve lost count of the number of apps there are... wait, we never had count of them anyway!

We can't spend a minute without Smartphones
Tyler Dunden had said “Shut down Facebook and Twitter servers. People will make real friends when they come out on the streets rioting.” It is said that we cannot have more than 150 friends in our lives. But 150 friends on Facebook is nothing short of a shame, right? It doesn’t matter if only 10 of them interact with us regularly.

We agree that we need to spend more time in real life than online, right? Let’s extend that lesson to our phones also. Let’s meet people in real world than in the virtual one. Let’s make it a point to call at least one friend a day and speak for 5 minutes. Let smart phones make our lives easier, not become our lives. Let the conversation flow at dinner or lunch rather than on WhatsApp. Reduce playing Temple Run and take a dip in the pool. Stop looking for mobile phone apps and catch a snack with a family member instead. Stop listening to your iPod on a walk. Let your mind wander; you’ll be surprised at what it comes up with. Let’s remember we are humans, not robots; let’s live like them.

6 comments :

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  2. Hi Vishal

    Very very true. I go in the train and I see all heads glued to mobiles. Of late people have been sending invites on face book for functions and boy I hate that...How do you know the recipient has seen your message? What if he does not log on to FB? I liked the idea of talking to atleast one friend every day for 5 mins :)

    P.S You may want to turn on comment moderation, the above seems to be a spam.

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Thanks Jaishree... And yeah, I need to reactivate the captcha code :)

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  3. It's really ridiculous how people these days keep fingering in phone even they are Face-to-face. Even I feel myself ridiculous how I keep checking my phone when somebody talking to me! You really raised a critical issue in people! Kudos bro! Fantastic as Always!

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    1. Isn't it, Atul? It's very frustrating also... Must admit that I had fallen into that trap sometime ago. There's an awesome game where all people meeting keep their phones in a stack and the first person to touch her/his phone foots the bill. We should try that :)

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