Anil Mathur,
Chief Operating Officer,
Godrej Interio
It’s Friday evening. Aman and Riya are out on their weekly date night at the happening new eatery in town. They have been married for five years. Friday evenings are their time out, when they switch off from the demands of the world and enjoy each other’s company. At least that’s how it’s supposed to be.
Instead, Riya is busy updating her Instagram. Aman, meanwhile, is scrolling through his work emails. Rather than be present in each other’s company, both are engrossed in their smartphones.
They’re not the only ones. Mobile phones light up and go out at tables around the eatery. Photographs are clicked; social media posts updated, messages answered, emails read. Virtual interactions compete for attention with actual conversation. The smartphone has placed the wider world only the swipe of a touchscreen away.
Never have two people living in different corners of the world been so well connected. But at the same time never have two people in the same room been more distant. It’s not uncommon at weddings, family dinners, social functions or any sort of public gathering to see people buried in their smartphones. While physically present, their minds are elsewhere.
Smartphones and the internet have revolutionized and enriched our lives. But on the flipside our overdependence on them has taken a toll on our relationships with our spouses, partners, friends and family members. In fact, according to a recent ‘Make Space for Life’ survey conducted by Godrej Interio says that about 75% of the Indian millennials felt that their partners spent less quality time with them owing to excessive use of smart phones and other technological devices.
The insights also suggests that their preoccupation with smart devices was eroding family ties and relationships. This goes beyond the struggle to maintain a healthy work-life balance. The survey also revealed that 56.7% Indians rate their work-life balance as terrible, which makes India one of the countries to have poorest work-life balances in the world. And, yes, smartphones and the connected lives we live today have made work far more convenient even if that means you’re never really disconnected from the office.
But our dependence on smartphones borders on the unhealthy with millennials glued to the screens of their devices even during their down time.
Where once families would discuss their day on the dinner table, bond over coffee and board games on the sofa in the living room, now it’s not uncommon for a couple to sit on the couch but be lost in their respective phones or tablets. They might be streaming videos on YouTube or football matches or watching their favourite shows. They may be sharing physical space but are interacting with their screens, not with each other.
Clearly, as positive an effect as technology has had on our lives, it has come at a cost. Ultimately, it’s a personal choice that every individual has to make. How invasive do you allow technology to be? It’s impossible to completely detach. We live far too much in the virtual world to go absolutely cold turkey. But it is important to put your phone, tablet, laptop aside when it really matters. Such as Aman and Riya’s date night. Putting their phones aside and spending some actual time with each other, after all it isn’t too much to ask for.
