Are your gadgets making you antisocial?

At a classy restaurant, I once saw a family of four. The mother and father were eating, their teenage son was busy with his tablet and PSP while their hot daughter had her earphones stuck in her ear listening to music.

At the airport, people are busy touching, sliding and sweeping their smartphones’ screens while waiting for their flights. No one bothers to speak.

At the office, colleagues who sit beside each other would rather talk via IMs and emails than speak personally.

At the café, instead of enjoying the aroma and taste of coffee or meeting someone special, people are working on their laptops.

At the mall, I once saw a couple fighting. Apparently, while the two were on a date, the girl kept telling stories and instead of the guy listening, he kept holding and staring at his phone.

On the streets, we now rarely see children playing games like “tumbang preso”, “habulan”, hide-and-seek, “piko”, “agawan-base” and “trumpo”. Kids these days are either in the computer shops playing MMORPG or at home dancing and playing tennis on Kinect in front of a huge TV. I hope they still grow-up having healthy social relationships.

The list goes on and yes I am guilty of most of the above examples too.

I remember last December, I met up with some good old college friends to have some eat-all-you-can buffet at Mall of Asia. My expectation is that we will have some neverending talk to catch up on what’s going on with our lives after not seeing each other for more than a year. But to my disappointment, we found ourselves holding up our gadgets about 70% of the time instead of talking with each other. Most of us were checking Facebook, BBM’ing and connecting with other friends virtually online instead of making the most out of our time to connect with real-world friends just sitting right in front of us.

It all seems weird. I am not against technology, in fact I am a major advocate of it because I finished an IT degree and computers are my bread and butter. I love how technology makes people’s lives easier but over the years I can’t help but notice that it is somewhat ruining the real-world social lives of people. Do you agree?

I think we really need to discipline ourselves to take it easy on the gadgets and concentrate more on finding ways to bond with family, friends and loved ones in the real physical world. Just my two cents.

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Image credit: Reuters | For illustration purposes only