Whenever I’m in an awkward silence position among friends and strangers, I would pull out my iPhone and start a conversation. It almost always breaks the ice, because I’d have a talking point for an App for every demographic group. If the person doesn’t have a smart phone, I’d still be able to engage them by showing the pictures of my kid on the phone. With children – I’d hand them over the phone and turn them into my best friends. Instantly.
I had my first iPhone roughly 3 months after my daughter was born. I’ve taken over 15,000 pictures to date. Most of them are of my daughter and my dog. My daughter is now 2 years old.
If you are in my Facebook circle, you’d have seen tones of pictures of my daughter with lots of funny captions. A reason why I like posting her picture is that, statistically, they score the highest number of ‘likes’. On a good day, her picture commands 50 likes. 10, (I’d like to believe) when the Brunei’s internet is not working. Pretty good stats, considering that I have only about 300 Facebook friends.
My phone sends me a notification each time I received a ‘like’ or a ‘comment’ (you can tell why I’m so hooked to it). Sometimes to appear not so desperate, I would wait a good half an hour before I respond to a comment. How insecure? How superficial? I know.
For the lack of a better way to sugarcoat this, Facebook is screwing up my self-esteem. I have given up my happiness to be dictated by the approval of most of the people whom I don’t even know!
While I was busy with my iPhone, my iPad has taken over my role of teaching my daughter alphabets and the names of animals; Youtube has disrupted my daughter’s gracious ballerina move (Gangnam Style) and the Baby Sign App has replaced me in the cool action moves I saved up for her.
At what cost?
I’m not a sociologist or a psychologist and I do not know what the long-term implication of this would be, but I do believe that education should be passed on, human to human.
The other night, my wife who was sleeping beside me, ‘What’s-App’ me the picture above, followed by this:
:* Gd Nite.
I could hear her silent protest, out loud, on my iPhone.
Just then, it occurred to me that I had been sleeping with my iPhone for the past two years.
LOL! But this isn’t funny.
