The Phone is Smart, but are You?

With the rise of Smart phones, connectivity to the digital world has taken a new turn. Customers now have the ability to hold personal data, as well as provide a link to the public world. In many cases the Smart Phone provides us with services we never had before. Instant email communication has become a given, with new innovations such as streaming live music and videos, as well as such features as pinpointing your current location and finding restaurants around you. Smart Phones also have the potential to start and sustain relationships that never existed before, such as on Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Some of the greatest innovations with the Smart Phones are the ability to access information in an instant. Long gone are the days when to research a topic you had to go to the local library and take out a book. Even the at home computers are becoming out of date. Now users can simply look up information the second they think of something. This allows people to have access to a massive amount of information that was never available before. Another impact of the Smart Phones is the newspaper and media. Print newspapers and the evening news are no longer needed to find out what is going on in your area. Instead of waiting until the next morning to read the headlines, people are constantly bombarded with news notifications. One can obviously see the positive aspects of receiving news instantly, but it has changed many social traditions that once dominated our world. The local paper boy or news anchors are no longer depended on to deliver the news, now it is simply an impersonal pop-up that comes up on your phone.
However, now that everyone is constantly looking at the phones in their hands, what consequences can it have on traditional social interactions? One of the characteristics of the internet is your ability to share your opinion freely. If one visits a restaurant, you can go on a website such as Urbanspoon or Yelp and discuss your experience. Though it allows users to access information that was never before available, it eliminates the traditional social interactions were we used to discuss our experiences. Instead of walking down the street looking at the world around you, you simply look in the palm of your hand. People have become more accustom to typing a response than speaking one. Though emailing someone might be easier than meeting in person, the social interactions that we used to get are now gone. The relationship one has digitally can’t compare to the relationships one can gain from face to face interactions.