slaves to chat
Online chatting, texting and social networking have become everyday tools for communicating with friends and family and for obtaining breaking information from across the globe in real time at almost no cost.
For many, chat and text messaging have replaced voice phone calls as the preferred means of staying in touch. Millions of people, on waking in the morning, feel their day hasn’t properly begun until they’ve turned on their devices to see what happened while they were sleeping.
Yes, chat is easier, faster, and makes some of us feel less uncomfortable when we are in an environment we want to escape and pretend we are not really there. We can just pick up our devices, retreat into the world of the smartphone or tablet screen, and ignore whatever is surrounding us.
Yes, it is undeniable that technology is extremely useful, but it also begs a question: are we relying on it too much? And just because we can use it anytime and anywhere we want, does it necessarily mean that we should?
“Mobile chatting is far less intimate than talking on the phone, not to mention face-to-face. This will make it difficult if you want to develop any kind of relationship with the person you are chatting with going forward,” said Dr Nattasuda Teaphant, head of the Center for Psychological Health and Public Wellness in the Faculty of Psychology at Chulalongkorn University.
“Personally, I think it should be the last preference if you really want to know a person.”
She is concerned that the effects of overuse of devices could be magnified in younger people who are not yet mature enough to make good judgements about when, where and how they should consume the technology. The expectation of instant responses also has ominous implications, said Krisakorn Sukavatvibul, a psychiatrist from Manarom Hospital in Bangkok.