Minding your manners in the 21st Century
I’m a firm believer in the power of technology. I believe in the effectiveness of the internet, and I genuinely look forward to a more electronic future. Friends of mine joke that I’m unable to go more than a few hours without technology or the internet, and I fear they might genuinely be right. My phone and laptop are my constant companions; I’ve named my phone and laptop too – Ciel and Keates join me on most of my “adventures.” Where one can’t go, the other is sure to appear.
It’s due to my personal love of all things that transmit EM waves that I say, with a heavy heart, that our collective culture has a widespread problem with technological etiquette.
When I was younger – fervently playing my Game Boy at family functions – my actions were excused.
“He’s just a child,” my mother would explain.
“He’s the youngest person here,” my father would offer.
“Leave him be, he doesn’t need to engage in adult discussions,” my aunts and uncles would conclude.
When I was younger, it was okay for me to be glued to a tiny computer screen, avoiding contact with the outside world. I’m older now; more mature perhaps. However, I’m certainly wise enough to recognize that staring at a screen instead of staring at a human face is both disrespectful and hurtful. This article is titled “Smartphone Etiquette,” but the desire to stare at shiny, colourful, constantly changing screens is a problem that arose with the advent of television, and has barely resolved itself since then.
We’re animals – animals that have evolved and adapted an almost unparalleled ability to detect subtle changes in environmental patterns. We’re naturally attracted to shiny, colourful, moving things. More importantly, we’re creatures who fall into habit incredibly easily. Caffeine, alcohol, and nicotine are all addictive substances, but the simple truth is that the human brain is a powerful machine that insists on finding the easiest path through any journey. The human brain is almost divinely geared towards addiction.
Internet addiction, smartphone addiction, and an addiction to Facebook and Twitter are all very real problems that we love to make light of, and that’s becoming a bit of a problem. I’ve never had a problem with someone constantly checking their phone in my presence but others tell me that their friends can’t stop tapping on Vines at dinner. It’s troubling, because humans can never be as interesting as a luminescent technological miracle we’ve all taken for granted. The internet is a time-sucking place, filled with as much wonder as annoying YouTube comments, but it will always have more instantly accessible, interesting content than a human can produce in the same amount of time.
“I was out at dinner a few nights ago, and my friend wouldn’t stop sending Snapchat messages to his friends,” said a friend once. “He’d pull out his phone whenever he got a message so he could make a weird face.”
If Einstein had to compete with an iPhone, I’m afraid most people would end up checking their messages a little after he explained his cow dreams.
Luckily, the people I spend time with only check their phones occasionally; my friends don’t fall into a frenzy of constant Facebook or Instagram updates. This observation leads me to believe – disparagingly – that I might be the odd one out. I think it’s time I admit I might have a smartphone etiquette problem.
Oddly enough, this is something I might have actually inherited from my parents. It was a sombre day in my home when my father first got his work-appointed Blackberry. It got worse when my mother and I got our Blackberries years later. With the advent of real connective technology – in the wake of operating systems a few user interface cycles from being full-fledged desktop devices – my parents show more signs of addiction than I do. Trips are marred by pictures taken and uploaded within the same hour. Instant messages flood inboxes only to be responded to between appetizers and main courses. Oft-buzzing phones are placed on tables – won’t anyone think of the children?
Our culture has an etiquette problem; of course, our culture has always had an etiquette problem. We’re rude, crude, disrespectful, abrasive, blunt, and otherwise difficult to be around. Ironically, we think other people are the rude ones. It might be a cultural universal that out-groups are less pleasing to be around than in-groups. I digress, we have a problem: we need to brush up on our smartphone etiquette. Swissotel, Emily Post, and Debrett’s need to stop worrying about hotels, restaurants, weddings, and How-to-be-British, and start worrying about Android, iOS, and Windows Phone.
We are, all of us, in need of new social guidelines explaining precisely how and when to check our phones, because this problem is only going to get worse. Google Glass looks absolutely ridiculous now, but it represents a future I’ve been dreaming of since watching any number of Sci-Fi movies. We’re moving towards an increasingly computer literate, interconnected, smartphone-toting world, and we need to make sure we brush up on our manners before we get there.