unplugging and disconnecting
just the other day i fell asleep during break and awoke suddenly (or rather startled). this friend was sitting beside me doing her work, and after a while we were talking about smartphones.
those who know me know that i really enjoy talking about technology. in fact, one of my favourite things about tech right now is loop wallet, a new kind of concept, or idea, or whatever you’d call it, that might be replacing NFC soon.
so we were talking about smartphones, because she was going to get a new smartphone sometime in March and she was considering an iPhone 5S (well, she didn’t exactly say an iPhone 5S, she said an iPhone 5, which I then corrected her by saying that Apple took the iPhone 5 off the shelves, they only have 4S and 5S models now). Being an iPhone owner I encouraged this move.
i also took the opportunity to lament at how smartphone users are constantly stuck to their phones, having to be available at all times to reply WhatsApp messages or the like. sometimes i wish that i could get off WhatsApp altogether and switch over to WeChat which has nice stickers and is used by less people (which means fewer disturbances).
unplugging has become more and more of a trend. you see Medium articles talking about this all the time. but unplugging proves to be such a difficult thing for youths who strive to be constantly available to their friends 24/7. my friend who does not have WhatsApp is constantly left out of certain conversations and also does not get information first-hand (she was the last to find out that a particular test had been postponed; she was studying for it when she got the news). information is gradually being transmitted real-time. without tools such as smartphones, it is a huge challenge to be around in today’s high-tech environment.
sometimes you are added to certain WhatsApp groups which serve the primary function of disseminating information. these are the groups that you can’t exit/leave - doing so means you’re taking a huge risk in the event something important is being announced through the chat group. sometimes you also can’t count on others to spread the word, because everyone assumes that you “got the message”. the advent of push notifications has revolutionised the smartphone software platform. the constant chimes keep reminding you that you are being boggled down to these “commitments”.
as such, the need to unplug and disconnect from every electronic device has become all the more important. we need to relive the times when electronic devices had not yet creeped into our worlds, when we played physical board games with our family members instead of “Words with Friends”.
lastly i want to end off by saying that my friend is very interesting - she uses what we call a dumbphone (without cellular data or wifi), but she also owns a third-generation iPod Touch, whose software has been capped at iOS 5 simply because of its incompatibility with new updates. she isn’t worse off than any other smartphone user out there in the world. she talks to her friends on WeChat which is available on the iPod Touch (unfortunately, WhatsApp is iPhone-only - not compatible with iPod Touch or iPad). She doesn’t lose out to her peers; sometimes she receives information slightly later, but that doesn’t put her at a huge disadvantage. i think we need to look towards her as a step towards disconnecting/unplugging.