electronic étiquette and digital addictions
NEWS FLASH:
My phone has this crazy app that allows me to talk to my friends IN REAL TIME. All I do is find them in my contacts > click their name > click call > and then it magically connects directly to their phone and notifies them that I’m waiting to talk with them. It’s great for catching up and making plans, or letting someone know if I’m a bit behind schedule or lost. This way I don’t have to text back and forth a million times, which is especially handy when I’m hanging out with someone else IRL and don’t want to sit there like a JERK ON MY CELLPHONE ALL DAY.
I’m tired of hanging out with people and their phones. I realize this is somewhat hypocritical because I am one of the most digitally connected people I know, but I also would like to point out that if you and I are spending quality time together, you’re very rarely going to see me pick up my phone and text someone else without specifically apologizing for “being on my phone.” I understand that sometimes you’re in the process of making plans for the future, and that’s fine. We all do it. But if you NEED TO MAKE PLANS RIGHT NOW, how about you pick up the phone , excuse yourself, and call the other person? If it’s not urgent can you please stop wasting my time? It’s pretty rude.
The other day the lovely cayley jane cooked a delicious meal for group of new and old friends. She cleaned the house and even pulled out THE DINNER TABLE, all of which is exciting for someone who generally eats alone sitting in the middle of the floor or in front of a computer. We opened our wine while my one friend furtively texted under the table. We said our thanks and began to enjoy curry extravaganza, but his plate remained untouched as he was preoccupied with his phone. The conversation was enjoyable, but carried entirely by the three of us who were present, until something inside of me snapped.
“Hey Dude, how’s your phone? “ I asked cautiously, not really WANTING to be a bitch.
“Yeah, how rude are YOU!?”
Another guest thankfully backed me up, and he sheepishly put his phone away, explaining that he was just making plans with so and so. I really don’t like to be a jerk like that – especially putting a friend on the spot in front of a group – but I’ve just had enough. I’m tired of spending time with people who are only half there.
I got my first blackberry about four years ago. It was given to me for work purposes, as being “the I.T. girl” for the an office of engineers required me to be reachable at all times, in case someone needed me to push a button for them. As a result, I developed a fairly compulsive blackberry habit, because I was essentially on call – always. But it was nothing compared to earlier digital addictions I’ve dealt with.
Prior to the blackberry, I was a self proclaimed MSN addict. Whenever I was at home I was always logged in and usually in the middle of a handful of rarely useful, mostly pointless conversations with friends who were also online all the time. A fun and easy addiction to slip into – especially when you’re living somewhere that it’s freezing cold and you have no money to go out with – but it can really damage your social skills. You develop a need for constant reinforcement and take for granted that you’ll always have someone there to respond to every little comment you make. Suddenly when you don’t have that reinforcement there feel panic, depression, and anxiety. Also, you can lose the ability to actually make plans, go out in public, have real conversations, and look people in the eye when you talk to them.
I realized that IMing had become a real problem for me sometime in 2005, so for January 2006 I detoxed and went cold turkey for a couple months. It was extremely challenging, especially considering I was in technical school at the time and was on a computer for most of my days. Thankfully I was too busy working to really notice, and eventually the hook in my brain lessoned it’s grip, and I no longer felt the compulsion to be logged in all the time. I didn’t need an electronic version of my friends to validate my existence anymore, and that was a very liberating feeling. I got the blackberry a few months later, around the time when texting was really just starting to become a thing that people did, but I didn’t REALLY get into it. I used my phone to check the 29381290 emails from work a day, to blog during my commutes, and an INTERNET COMMUNICATIONS DEVICE, but that’s really it.
I guess I shouldn’t be so judgemental of my friends who are stuck to their phones now as I was once stuck to MSN messenger. It’s still new and exciting for many people to now have this amazing connectivity to their peer group, and just because I couldn’t control myself doesn’t mean everyone else will get stuck as badly as I once was. In a way, I feel I am lucky to have already gone through my digital adolescence, because I think the risk for addiction is a lot greater now than it used to be. With the advent of things like facebook, adsense, SEO, every 0 and 1 is tuned specifically to your interests and directed with the intent of sucking you in. Also straight up usability has improved exponentially – I can take a high resolution photo on my phone and have it distributed to almost every person I’ve ever met within about 14 seconds. That’s just…. both awesome and terrifying.
I think the key difference is that my addiction wasn’t mobile. When I left the house, I left MSN behind, and even when I first got a blackberry I refused to install any instant messaging clients on it. The thought of having a facebook chat client on my phone terrifies me – if you want to talk to me in real time, you must first prove yourself worthy of being given my phone number. Then we can use the “call” app, makes plans, meet IRL and discuss over a nice pitcher of sangria. or on our bikes. or really anywhere other than through a screen.
I’m sure your parents would agree.
cruisin the internets