Shifty eyes diverted in a downward gaze, fingers thumbing away at private messages that could lead to the formation of an international conference, a family reunion, or even the possibility getting laid tonight. A row of of 4 black iPhones followed by a single white iPhone, and then an iPad 2, beside 2 business looking Blackberrys, preceded by the combo breaker – a slightly larger than palm Samsung Galaxy Note. This isn’t a smartphone test run factory nor a hackers’ dungeon, but the common phenomena in Singapore’s public transport scene nowadays. Indeed, you’d be hard pressed to find a young adult without knowledge or ownership of a smartphone these days.
Yet nestled in this lovely utopia of communication convenience, with nonstop internet access and social media on the go, we sometimes suffer from the worst forms of miscommunication. First, the sheer variety of ways to communicate over a smartphone can be insanely baffling. At risk of sounding like a technophobe, I find the simple act of texting over SMS more comforting than anything else. Just recently, I found myself at the mercy of friends whose main means of communication each spanned the following, respectively: Twitter, WhatsApp, iMessage, Facebook Chat. We were supposed to meet for a simple dinner but Mr Twitter swore he had tweeted a message saying he’d be really late, and then Miss Facebook Chat who was bestowed with the duty to make reservations had left us Facebook messages saying there’d be a change of dinner venue. Thank God I had the intelligence to check all these social media platforms beforehand but what was left of the gathering? It became a not-so-romantic date between Miss Facebook Chat and I, while the rest took their own sweet time to adjourn to the changed venue, after I had WhatsApped AND texted all of them.
Apart from miscommunication by means of divergent social media usage, I’ve also seen many grapple with heartache, tears spilling over their smartphones. How so? In the past, people ended relationships by means of face to face acknowledgement which left little room for questioning what this text or that might encrypt. Then, some people evolved to texting or WhatsApping their unhappiness to their partners, giving birth to sleepless nights and late night emergency meetings where girlfriends gather to chat and comfort a certain heartbroken female counterpart. Not to mention WhatsApp, the mother of all communication miscommunication. A single Google search revealed that many people had asked what these two sacred green ticks might mean. Oh and for the record, 1 tick meant the message was successfully delivered to the server whereas 2 ticks meant the message was successfully delivered to the device of the chat partner. This does not indicate that message was read, just that it was delivered! There I solved the mystery, now we can stop the blame game of Why-have-you-not-replied-my-WhatsApp?
In other words, while smartphones pave the way for addictive games on-the-go and easeful communication, it can just as easily lead to a communication breakdown. Therefore, take some time to put that smartphone back into your bag and give full attention to that friend or lover beside you. And if you were alone on the public transport…..whatever happened to the good old days of awkward people watching when we had nothing to fiddle with in our fingers?
