Smartphones

This is a post which goes hand-in-hand with yesterday's post and it is basically an expansion on one of the points I made in yesterday's post. If you have not read this post, click here. Yesterday I mentioned how socialising had updated to meet the current world standards of technology and how this has impacted us both negatively and positively. I made a point about smartphones and their impact on socialising and so today I am going to expand on this point as well as discuss some other areas of our lives that smartphones are affecting. As I said yesterday, they are limiting our face-to-face interactions while also stimulating our world-wide connectivity. Even on a local scale people text more to each other than they would talk about face-to-face as they do not have to face the social awkwardness that a topic or question would bring up.

Source: http://urbantimes.co/2013/09/this-restaurants-policy-put-your-phone-down-and-socialise/

Smartphones, in fact most phones, have made it easier for the rise of the global community. People are now easily able to instantly communicate to someone on the other side of the world and receive an instant reply. In this respect, smartphones have made great headway in this respect by making it even easier to communicate quickly through video-calling and texting which saves individual conversations. They have also limited our world-view. If you go to a concert today you will most likely be seeing the majority of people (probably including yourself) using their phones to record the concert, take photos/selfies, check Facebook and do everything but enjoy what they paid so much to see. It has become socially accepted and if you go to a concert, expect to be watching it through someone's smartphone camera. Even when on dates you see both people on their phones texting other people. Sometimes you even walk past a group of people texting each other! As I said yesterday, it can make for less socially awkward moments but it can also leave people with very little social skills and manners which you can only gain through experience. Even when you go out with family and friends you seem some people living on their phones. My brother is an annoying culprit for this. No matter where you go, be at a restaurant or someone's home, he is always on his phone for the majority of the night. Not only is it rude, it is incredibly annoying. Especially when you need to repeat yourself several times before he understands what you are going on about. It is really frustrating.

Smartphones are both an improvement and a hindrance in our modern society, see you tomorrow!

WATCH the video that sparked these posts:

Social Interactions 2.0

Before I begin I just want to take a moment to explain to you that this post goes hand-in-hand with tomorrow's post which I am also writing straight after this one. You may notice some points in here that will lead on to tomorrow's post but tomorrow's post is not going to be entirely the same as today as it will focus on just one aspect of what I am going to talk about and discuss the wider impacts it has. But, you will just have to wait until tomorrow night (at 6pm AEST) to see what I am talking about. Social Interaction has updated in our modern society. What was once considered social a few decades ago is completely different to the modern conception of the idea. Technology like smartphones and sites like Facebook and Twitter have been some of the main causes for this update. Social interaction is adapting and we have just got to get with the times.

Source: http://instagram.heroku.com/users/gekkolife#p535214164077054847_490341153

No longer is the nightly phone call to friends normal, in fact it is nearly unheard of. I know a few people who find it weird when their friends call them. They find it easier to talk on Facebook or texting using their smartphones. This new age of technology has created a generation of people with social anxiety. There are more people now than ever before who find it easier to talk to people using Facebook or texting as they do not have to deal with any social awkwardness that can come with a face-to-face conversation. Of course, I am not saying this is an entirely bad thing, in fact it is improving social interaction in some ways. For one, people find it easier than ever before to communicate with people from far away and receive near-instant responses. It has also made it easier for people with social anxiety to communicate with others. It has also made it so much easier to catch up with people as people's lives are basically on sites like Facebook and Twitter. One look at a person's "wall" on Facebook can tell you so much about them and what they have been doing recently. You can see their likes, statuses, friends, information and relationship status. Of course, with nearly every positive there is a negative and this is no exception. People are losing their ability to communicate with people in person and so when it comes to times where they need to talk to someone face-to-face they lack the basic manners that you gain from experience. They miss out on all the social cues as they spend their lives in the digital world where you need to say what you are feeling as, unless you are Face-Timing, you cannot see the other person's face. Social interactions have indeed changed over the years, we have updated to version 2.0.

Check out tomorrow's post for a further look at one of my points and the inspiration behind these posts. See you tomorrow!

Headphones

So before I begin this post I just have to warn you all about something. Despite the seemingly-innocent title this post is actually going to be a bit of a rant. Yeah, so if you do not want to read a rant about headphones then stop reading now because you are most likely not going to enjoy this. Wow, I really know how to sell a post. Anyway, moving on to the actual post. There are so many things that are annoying about headphones. Sometimes this can be painful in the figurative sense while at other times it needs to be taken more literally. I think I speak for everyone when I say that headphones can be really annoying. So yeah, the rest of this post is just going to be a bit of a rant as to why headphones are so annoying.

Source: http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2011/07/headphones-tangled-apple-has-a.html

The first thing, which you should have seen from the picture, is how tangled headphones get. I would seriously not be surprised if the manufacturer made them such that they automatically tangled. It is just really annoying when you put them down for two seconds untangled and then come back and they are a complete mess. Seriously, I put it under my pillow in a neat line and then when I go to use them they are completely mixed up. In the dark frantically trying to use them before the video stops buffering and makes a loud noise. It is like trying to tie up a lolly-snake with your tongue and your mouth closed. Have you ever actually tried that? Do you know how hard it actually is? Anyway, getting back on the subject of headphones. Headphones can also be very painful, especially when a certain someone who shall remain nameless (Dad) rips them out of your ears to tell you something. I mean, I do not have it on loud enough that I can not hear anything outside of the ear-buds. Sometimes you just need to think before you act. Then there are the times when you forget that they are plugged in to your laptop and you move away. From here either the laptop moves with you and you ending up breaking it (or nearly smashing it to pieces) or your ears just really begin to hurt. Is it just me or has this happened to any of you as well. Headphones are just very annoying at times and I really want to destroy them all and banish them from the face of the earth.

Headphones are just incredibly infuriating sometimes, see you tomorrow!