Are digital devices taking over our lives?

[colin2]

If the Bar Girls in Pattaya are Digital devices , then the answer is Yes !.

[davejones]

I don't even have a smartphone, although I'm planning to buy one soon. I could never become addicted to something like a phone though. Useful for keeping in touch, checking things, etc, but why would I want to use it all day every day? I have a life.

[lomatopo]

I love how people kvetch about "digital devices taking over our lives" here on ThaiVisa, presumably from an internet-connected device.

[WhizBang]

Has anybodys phone NOT got candy crush on it????

And what, pray tell, is 'candy crush'? I'll go out on a limb and make a guess that it is a game.

I know I am probably in the minority, but I have no games on my phone. Only a small handfull of usefull (free) apps.

My phone is rooted, so I went in and uninstalled most of the preinstalled apps, some of which were games. No facebook, no twitter, no utube, no crap. Rooted phones are good.

[DMC1]

I am currently offshore in Thailand sat on a bank of 8 public computers. I am on Thai Visa and the other 7 guys who are Thai nationals are looking at Facebook and probably using the chat function to chat with loved ones/friends on their personal devices at home. Nobody loves me so all I have is TV!! In this situation it is great as we don't have 8 public telephones available to call home.

[RichCor]

OK, which one of you hooligans just posted this to my facebook?

[Cloggie]

Spend a lot of time on the beach and see a lot of people only looking at their TAB / iPad or mobile, so I switched off GPRS on my mobile now.

If I go to the beach now, can only use it as a telephone, great!

[Loptr]

The rise of phubbing - aka phone snubbing

Practice has spawned an online backlash that has gone global

“While you finish updating your status, we’ll gladly service the polite person behind you.” “No Tweeting, No Facebook, No Instagram, No Foursquare, No Sexting: respect the food, the music and the company you’re in.” These are the posters you can download from the elegant Stop Phubbing website – the online home of a campaign against digitally derived rudeness that has started to go global.

Coined by Alex Haigh, a 23-year-old Melbourne resident, phubbing stands for “phone snubbing”, and describes “the act of snubbing someone in a social setting by looking at your phone instead of paying attention”. Tongues are firmly in cheeks when it comes to some of the stats (“if phubbing were a plague, it would decimate six Chinas”), but the intention behind the campaign is serious enough: to highlight the scourge of glazed faces in public places, text-tapping fingers during supposedly intimate dinners, and reunions that might as well have been held via Google Hangouts given the screen time involved.

When it comes to smartphones, tablets and other mobile delights, many of us have the unfortunate tendency to behave like teenagers: prodding and poking our shiny toy to the exclusion of anyone and anything else. And that’s partly because, so far as mobile tech goes, we are all adolescents. Mass-market smartphones are barely 17 years old; iPhones only six; and iPads just three. Little wonder we’re playing etiquette catchup, or that it has taken a digital native to unlock this particular cabinet of fascination.

<snipped for fair use>

Source here - http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/features/the-rise-of-phubbing--aka-phone-snubbing-8747229.html

I wasn't aware of the source of this article when I posted it. I was given it as a printed piece of paper which I scanned and OCR'd.

I goes without saying that I would always credit a source if I knew what it was. If I didn't it would be plagiarism and that is unacceptable, even on TV.

I have dumped more than one GF for this type of behavior. Call me old school, but if I've showed enough interest in a person to spend time with them, then I consider it a snub if that person spends the time together with their nose stuck in some gadget.

[Konini]

Although I have been obsessed with smartphone and internet technology, it is starting to wear off. When out with people, I very rarely even look at my phone any more and I consider it very bad manners to be using the phone when out with people. I'm thinking the smarphone/iPad etc. fad will eventually wear off and people will go back to giving their attention to each other again.

Back home a couple of months ago I went for lunch with my sister (who I haven't seen for almost a year). Whilst eating starters, she pulled out her phone. I gave her 2 minutes, then put on my best Miss Jean Brodie voice and said "Are you going to put that away?".

It worked (of course, nobody is immune to my best Miss Jean Brodie voice), but I shouldn't have had to do that. She didn't get it out again until we were back at her home, although it annoyed me because it seemed every minute that annoying whistle notification tone came out of her bag. I looked around the restaurant and most people seemed to be glued to their phone, eating with one hand. Not a good look.

It's plain rude. We were brought up better than that.

[Konini]

Although I have been obsessed with smartphone and internet technology, it is starting to wear off. When out with people, I very rarely even look at my phone any more and I consider it very bad manners to be using the phone when out with people. I'm thinking the smarphone/iPad etc. fad will eventually wear off and people will go back to giving their attention to each other again.

Back home a couple of months ago I went for lunch with my sister (who I haven't seen for almost a year). Whilst eating starters, she pulled out her phone. I gave her 2 minutes, then put on my best Miss Jean Brodie voice and said "Are you going to put that away?".

It worked (of course, nobody is immune to my best Miss Jean Brodie voice), but I shouldn't have had to do that. She didn't get it out again until we were back at her home, although it annoyed me because it seemed every minute that annoying whistle notification tone came out of her bag. I looked around the restaurant and most people seemed to be glued to their phone, eating with one hand. Not a good look.

It's plain rude. We were brought up better than that.

[isawasnake]

Worse yet, I believe it has become sort of a (temporary) social status vehicle. Girls especially, just sitting there doing nothing are for some reason perceived poorly. When the phone is out, "somebody must want to be in contact with them" and the status goes up. I feel like this is true, and it is totally pitiful. The phones companies really are onto something, a product that sells itself. I hate it, but that is where we are.