All of us have to concede to the fact that they cannot "live" without their phones now. We have come too far with them. This little piece of plastic has crept into our lives without us really understanding the gravity or the depth of it; to an extent, it has altered our social behavior.
I am going to construct this blog based on how my relationship with my phone has changed over the years.
I remember the times we had landline phones (stationary non mobile wired phone) in the 90s. I even remember being really excited every time the phone rang. I would rush to it to answer the phone. The cordless phone was the next step which gave freedom to pick up the phone from my room, talk to my friends.
I started using cell phones when I started college. It was more of an occasional texting and calling platform than anything else. I have forgotten to take the phone along multiple times and it did not really matter and I did not miss it. The cell phone was still complementing the home phone, partly due to call costs of the cell phone. After a couple of years, the cell phone became indispensable after my then relationship turned long distance. It was essentially the object that made the relationship work.
After I moved from my home city, cellphone was the only way to communicate. It became the only source of communication to family and friends. Somewhere along the way, when data came in and storage capacities increased, it became a regular music and radio player. I did not really start using email on phone till I got the galaxy nexus in 2012. Around this time, this device became everything -
Music player, Email client, browser, GPS navigator, online messenger, and Oh, a telephone!
Now, I completely depend on it, especially looking things up all the time. Whenever a thought pops into my head and I need to find more about it, Bam! the phone is out. I have realized that I don't really evaluate if that information is critical at that moment in time. It is like an addiction. "Information is at your fingertips, might as well see it". Even the way a phone is designed, it demands a lot of your attention. There is no weight attached to relevance of the messages. Every message demands equal attention from you. I constantly find myself losing my train of thought because of an email, text, phone call or even a notification from some app that you did not realize you had given permission to.
In social situations, I consciously try not to let my phone get in the way of a conversation. The phone does come to my rescue in uncomfortable social situations. I constantly keep thinking about how my life has changed because of technology (mostly for the better!). Maybe in the future, one would pay to not be "connected" all the time? It is a scary thought but I do think it will happen.
I just made my phone timeline for my understanding: