Gentlemen, have you ever considered the fact that there is someone else in your partners life? I am sorry to say but there is an increasingly high risk that she is spending more and more time with this addition to your relationship and the statistics show that women are developing an ever closer relationship with...their smart phones.
It may not feel like it but I am noticing more and more people sitting opposite each other in bars, pubs and even restaurants that are spending more time online than they are in reality with the people sat around them. This may seem like a ridiculous thing to highlight on an online blog that I want people to read and engage with online however there has to be a balance. Your Facebook friends are great to share a joke/story/photo with when you’re bored. Twitter is fantastic to see what outrageous point a celebrity is making or what people are saying about a hit TV show or sporting event. Real friends, however, actually care about YOU, they have your back when you need them, they made effort to actually come see you, join you for a pint, go out to dinner with you. And let us not forget our fiancés, boyfriends, girlfriends, wives and husbands. These people need your time and attention so much more than your online profile does. My Good Thing today is therefore, Aeroplane Mode.
Try it. It is simple and cannot be brushed aside with, “What if I need my phone in an emergency?” because you still have it on you. All you need to do is switch your phone over to the flight setting and all of sudden all of the online noise stops. No notifications that Dave ‘likes’ a comment in a status that you also commented on two days ago. No Twitter update to let you know that a random person with a dodgy link as their profile is now ‘following’ you. Not even a text from someone you know in real life asking you what you’re doing next weekend. Just you and the person you have chosen to be with spending real, quality time in each other’s company.
This may seem old fashioned but look at the figures:
“A seeming obsession with Facebook, Twitter, watching Gangnam style clips on YouTube and using online music services has seen UK consumers download a record 424 megabytes of data each per month on their smartphones and tablets. The figure is almost 60% more than a year ago.
Much of the increase in use of mobile devices, especially smartphones, has been driven by the popularity of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, with 40% of UK adults accessing their profiles on the go.”
(Source:http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/dec/13/uk-online-obsession-ofcom-latest-figures)
The more we use it, the more it grows, the more it grows, the more we use it. It is undoubtedly a highly effective and useful tool and women it seems are embracing it at an increasing rate:
Health – 9% of women use health apps a lot vs 4% of men.
Entertainment – 28% of women use entertainment mobile apps a lot vs 15% of men.
Lifestyle – 17% of women use lifestyle apps frequently vs 8% of men.
Social networking – 48% of women use social apps a lot vs26% of men.
Games – 37% of women use gaming apps regularly vs 26% of men.
So let’s take a minute to acknowledge the power of the internet and the devices we use to connect us to it and then turn them off. Let us take a look at what we have right in front of us and connect with those people for a while. I promise it will lead to Good Things.
