Mobile Madness - How Connected is TOO Connected?

I have an iPhone, an iPad and a MacBook. At work, I have another iPhone, another iPad and a laptop. Six mobile devices in total – and I’m naive enough to consider myself reasonably ‘disconnected’.

A recent post on health and well-being blog MindBodyGreen stated that the first thing many people do when they wake up in the morning after switching off the alarm on their smartphone is check text messages, emails and Facebook. Upon first reading this statement, I was completely alarmed and appalled – seriously, how obsessed are we? After a moment of reflection, I realized most embarrassingly that I do this too! Similarly, I read an article in The Age Business Day about a small business owner so obsessed with staying connected she couldn't help checking her work emails on her wedding day AND her honeymoon. Once again, I was mortified by the degree of our inability to disconnect, and once again I could very easily recall memories of a multitude of holidays where I found it next to impossible to disconnect.

Personally, I think that one of the greatest implications mobile devices will continue to have as we become increasingly connected is the deterioration of traditional face-to-face human communication. For example, one of my girlfriends is perpetually using her mobile phone to text, Facebook, email, Instagram and SnapChat. During the four years we've been friends, she’s never once called me. Not once. Every form of communication we have when we’re not hanging out together is via text, email or through social media. Furthermore, when we do catch up in person, she spends the entire time on her mobile contacting all of her other friends! It’s very easy for me to conclude that my friend has an anxiety of disconnection as Professor Sherry Turkle discussed in her interview with Frontline. The technology has become a physical extension of her identity, and to disconnect for as little as half an hour is simply impossible.

My biggest concern though is the impact constant mobile connectivity will have on the next generation. My colleagues constantly tell me stories of how their genius two or three year old child knows exactly how to watch the latest episode of Pepper Pig on their iPad. How their six year old needs a compulsory iPad for prep. And how their twelve year old has a greater mobile phone bill than their own. It’s impossible to predict exactly what the future will look like, however I can imagine that when each of these children are my age, their interpersonal skills and communication methods will greatly differ from those of my own. 

To further prove my point, I leave you with this clip of a baby who thinks a magazine is a broken iPad...