Phone v.s Me

You are sitting in a nice restaurant, with a few of your friends, waiting for your food to arrive. As you are patiently waiting for your dish, you notice that everyone of your friends are staring at their iPhones and not making a word. You thought about starting a conversation but the silence discouraged you and you proceed to pullout your phone instead.

Whether or not it is a concern, we’ve all experienced it. Why do we check our phone every opportunity we get? Why do we rather go on social media than actually socialize? To what extent are we going to decide to put down our smart phones and realize there is a life to live. I don’t know the answers to any of the questions above but I do know that the over usage of phones is having a negative impact on our lives, especially communication.

Social media allows us to connect with millions of other people which makes contacting people so easy and simple. Although smartphones had made our social life very convenient, it also created consequences. One of the main consequences is social awkwardness which can lead to social anxiety when confronted with new people to meet in person.

I wasn’t sure if resisting the use of my iPhone 6 would improve my communication but I was willing to give it a try. So I decided to give myself a rule which is not touch my phone whenever I’m having a meal with my friend(s). For the past two weeks, I kept track on how many times I actually followed it (shown below).

After the first week I almost gave up on my mini-experiment, but thankfully I committed to my plan. Nothing changed much during the first week, however during the second week I start to notice that I’m getting more comfortable with engaging in conversations. Sometimes I get nervous starting a conversation with strangers but now I get less antsy starting a conversation them. For me its a big improvement and I will definitely continue this practice and I highly recommend you to try it.