A Little Less Conversation

The majority of my friends have smartphones. I never paid much attention to this but I've noticed, recently, that whenever we're all together eating dinner or hanging out, none of us are fully engaged in conversation. We're all just looking at our phones, using various apps, surfing the web, or texting other people. There isn't much conversation going on between us whenever we're on our phones. It wasn't until my one friend (who doesn't have a smartphone) told us that we needed to put our phones down, that I realized the problem.

I can't say that the concept of not being on your phone at dinner is weird because I grew up in the mid to late 90s; a time when smartphones didn't even exist but I think this generation, in particular, is slowly pushing face-to-face interaction to the curb in exchange for our cellular devices. In class we talked about how we get gratification out of the media that we use. Gratification, simply put, is the satisfaction you gain from something and we talked about this sense of receiving gratifications from different kinds of media.

We all want to get something out of using social networks and the internet, otherwise, we wouldn't use them. That said, the internet and various applications gratifies us because they do for us what we want them to do. They are convenient, help create diversions in awkward situations, gives us entertainment, and are great for getting information of all kinds. Before the age of smartphones, we had computers to do all of this stuff. Yet, now that our phones are becoming computers, I think the same could be said about them; our phones give us gratification. Thinking about the percentage of people who actually prefer face to face interaction (over 80%), it's interesting that people spend so much time on their phones.

When I'm not using my phone, I notice that other people are using theirs. I see people in class on their phones all the time and even people walking up and down the street are completely engaged with whatever they're doing on their phones, even if they're walking with a friend or two. I'm not sure why this generation is 'obsessed' with smartphones but I do know this. One, though we prefer face to face interaction, there is less and less conversation behind had. I don't mean to exaggerate because, people in this generation DO interact with their friends face to face, but when you take into account how often the time they spend talking to each other is wasted on the phone, it really does seem like the amount of conversation that is being had is less than what it used to be in the 90s. Also, people don't really call each other on the phone anymore. For example, I have friends that go to a different campus and instead of calling each other, we just spend time texting. I'm not sure why but it seems like a lot of people my age don't converse with each other as much as they could especially since we have technology that allows us to speak to other people that aren't necessarily nearby.

Another thing that I know from observation and from experience, is that this generation's 'obsession' with smartphones comes with a lot of pressure. This pressure is coming from people with smartphones and it's being unloaded on people without them. Before I got my iPhone two summers ago, I had a basic phone. I was able to receive/make calls and text messages so I was satisfied with it. My friends, however, didn't see it that way and, of course, people judged me for the kind of phone that I had because everyone else around me had a smartphone and I had this old, seemingly prehistoric device. So, while I didn't see anything wrong with my phone, I still felt the pressure of not having a smartphone. I think this is where the idea of obsolete technology (or technology that a vast majority of people no longer use or is out of date) has something to do with this. Technology is always advancing and trends are always changing. With that said, I wonder if this idea of advancing technology and new trends is contributing to the lessening of the amount of verbal interaction we have with each other and if we are only truly connecting through the one thing most of the college students in this country have in common: smartphones.