Smartphones: A life changing technology

In this blog, I want to discuss the influence of smartphones on peoples’ lives nowadays. An interesting topic, because of the major differences in habits, pastime and staying in touch. In the pre-smartphone period, people used the internet mostly via a desktop or, if they wanted to be ‘mobile’, a laptop. Nowadays however, there is a certain amount of time spent on the Internet by the use of a smartphone. Whether you are looking up certain information about the weather, about departure times of trains or about a stupid fact that just wouldn’t come to mind fast enough, all this information can be accessed by a few clicks or even a few touches on your smartphone anywhere, and at any time.

I will now discuss this topic on my own experiences when I started using my Blackberry. That first, magical moment I had my smartphone and could use it for all those pointless and fun stuff can be considered a life changing moment. From this moment on, I discovered the convenient functions I mentioned (looking up information about a variety of topics) as well as I started to like Twitter and Facebook all of a sudden. At first, I was kind of skeptical about these social media, especially about Twitter. However, after being able to read and produce tweets from every location and at any time I was bored, it became much more interesting. Nowadays, the first thing I do when I wake up is checking my Twitter timeline to see if something interesting has been posted.

Another shift is the use of Blackberry Messenger and Whatsapp instead of texting. With my unlimited Internet contract, contacting people has become way cheaper, and still becomes cheaper since everyone who can pick a new phone will pick a smartphone. Therefore, almost everyone can be reached as much as you want for as long as you want without having to be cautious about the maximum amount of messages.

After reading this story I suppose you understand that I’m quite positive about this ‘new’ technology and I guess most of you will agree that it’s an enriching gadget to your life. A downside of the whole story is that you can get too obsessed by smartphone use as the following commercial shows, although it’s up to yourself to not let that happen ;).