As I was walking to the bus interchange from an MRT station a few days ago, I suddenly realised that practically everyone who was walking around me were on their phones/iPads/tablets. The MRT station was so packed during the peak hour at the time, and yet everyone there was alone - absorbed in their own world of texts/messages/dramas/games on their phones and tablets.

Is this what the world has come to? Is everyone so lonely that they constantly occupy themselves with their phones or tablets, hoping to find some source of entertainment to kill their time? What ever happened to walking and just enjoying whatever was around them? What happened to walking and giving out free smiles to passers-by? With the advent of modern technology it seems that the world has gotten smaller - too small, in fact, that everyone has become stuck in their own virtual world, and everything else around them have become unimportant.

Have you ever experienced this: you're having lunch with an old friend, a friend that you haven't seen in a very long time, and that you specially set a date with to meet up just to catch up on each other's lives. Both of you were eager, and looked forward to that lunch. But during the meal, you hear your friend's phone ring with the alert of an incoming message or text, and he takes his phone out and begins to focus on it instead of on you.......... and then he's gone. It's always been a pet peeve of mine to see someone else stuck in the virtual world when their attention should be on you. Especially when you're talking to them. It's a form of respect to at least recognise the presence of your companion in front of you and resist the temptation to check your phone while in their presence. When someone uses their phone right in front of physical company, it's like telling them that they're boring, that they'd rather be involved in talking to other people virtually than interacting with whoever's physically in front of them. It's telling them that they're not important. It's so rude.

We're all so reliant on technology nowadays, especially on our phones, that we feel handicapped and naked without them. When we leave the house without our phones, we feel like we've been cut off from the rest of the world and that we're going to be outdated by the time we get to check our phones again. Of course, together with the advent of technology comes the need to respond more quickly, to be there at every beck and call of a friend or boss. In this respect our lives have been forced to speed up so rapidly and we're forced to multitask continuously from the moment we wake up until we sleep. And even in our sleep we're expected to respond immediately when someone needs it. There is no more excuse to be unavailable because our phones are always supposed to be with us. We're supposed to be contactable - always and immediately, and this is probably one of the biggest problems of technology today. That's why we're always caught up with our phones or tablets - we're so used to being occupied with something and to be multitasking that without any of it we feel empty. It has become a rare commodity to have a leisurely walk in a park, and even then such an activity can be deemed as a waste of time.

Consider taking a day off technology today - it's really a need for one to just get away from everything else and have an off-day from technology. That way we can genuinely have time for ourselves without any distractions, and that way we can truly reflect and think about ourselves, about the things around us.

As I was walking to the bus interchange from an MRT station a few days ago, I suddenly realised that practically everyone who was walking around me were on their phones/iPads/tablets. The MRT station was so packed during the peak hour at the time, and yet everyone there was alone - absorbed in their own world of texts/messages/dramas/games on their phones and tablets.

Is this what the world has come to? Is everyone so lonely that they constantly occupy themselves with their phones or tablets, hoping to find some source of entertainment to kill their time? What ever happened to walking and just enjoying whatever was around them? What happened to walking and giving out free smiles to passers-by? With the advent of modern technology it seems that the world has gotten smaller - too small, in fact, that everyone has become stuck in their own virtual world, and everything else around them have become unimportant.

Have you ever experienced this: you're having lunch with an old friend, a friend that you haven't seen in a very long time, and that you specially set a date with to meet up just to catch up on each other's lives. Both of you were eager, and looked forward to that lunch. But during the meal, you hear your friend's phone ring with the alert of an incoming message or text, and he takes his phone out and begins to focus on it instead of on you.......... and then he's gone. It's always been a pet peeve of mine to see someone else stuck in the virtual world when their attention should be on you. Especially when you're talking to them. It's a form of respect to at least recognise the presence of your companion in front of you and resist the temptation to check your phone while in their presence. When someone uses their phone right in front of physical company, it's like telling them that they're boring, that they'd rather be involved in talking to other people virtually than interacting with whoever's physically in front of them. It's telling them that they're not important. It's so rude.

We're all so reliant on technology nowadays, especially on our phones, that we feel handicapped and naked without them. When we leave the house without our phones, we feel like we've been cut off from the rest of the world and that we're going to be outdated by the time we get to check our phones again. Of course, together with the advent of technology comes the need to respond more quickly, to be there at every beck and call of a friend or boss. In this respect our lives have been forced to speed up so rapidly and we're forced to multitask continuously from the moment we wake up until we sleep. And even in our sleep we're expected to respond immediately when someone needs it. There is no more excuse to be unavailable because our phones are always supposed to be with us. We're supposed to be contactable - always and immediately, and this is probably one of the biggest problems of technology today. That's why we're always caught up with our phones or tablets - we're so used to being occupied with something and to be multitasking that without any of it we feel empty. It has become a rare commodity to have a leisurely walk in a park, and even then such an activity can be deemed as a waste of time.

Consider taking a day off technology today - it's really a need for one to just get away from everything else and have an off-day from technology. That way we can genuinely have time for ourselves without any distractions, and that way we can truly reflect and think about ourselves, about the things around us.