Sideways News

The Internet has undoubtedly changed how we interact with one another. The rise of social networking, the ubiquity of email and the steady adoption of smart phones as standard devices have changed how we communicate.

Like many a journalist approaching a piece, I had to ask myself the six basic questions about digital communication: Who? What? Why? Where? When? How?

And the answer is yes.

Thanks to technology, millions of us get in touch about anything, for any reason, anywhere, at any time and in more ways than ever before.

But are we actually saying more? Constant connectivity, whether email or mobile, means even the most basic communication is a dialogue. Everything’s a conversation now.

Last month, I looked up a builder to do some work. When I called, there was a lot of background noise and he was having trouble concentrating, so I suggested we talk later, promising to text him my address and number. After I hung up, I realised I had called a landline and had no way of texting him.

Back in the old days – and I’m talking the really old days where if you wanted to talk to someone you had to call their house and hope they were in – you would set up a time and a place and commit to it. Even arranging a builder’s visit with a single phone call is become a practice many of us lost in the mists of the noughties. One phone call to get a thing done isn’t the done thing.

Take a get-together for the growing wired – sorry – wireless masses. Arrangements made on Facebook are followed up with group-emailed Google Maps, arrivals heralded by text, excuses backed up with photographic evidence and impressions summarised in Twitter.

But for some people, mobile devices have meant things are getting out of hand.

Cilla Mitchell is a web developer and self-confessed heavy user of the Internet. She describes her morning routine: “I would check my mobile when I leave the house. In the office, while my Outlook was starting up on my PC, I’d open Firefox and read my webmail.”

But when a doctor recently signed her off work for stress, she went on a self-imposed technological retreat.

“I isolated myself,” she says, “I was stressed and the added communication was a contributing factor.”

She cut out the Internet and texting - communicating with friends either face to face or by phone. She stopped rushing for calls and occasionally picked up voicemails, but those dropped away soon after she stopped sending emails.

The result: “Relief,” she says, “It was peaceful. I felt awesome.”

Mrs. Mitchell soon returned to work, where sending email is an essential part of her job, but she learned some valuable lessons from her experiment.

She says: “I go online less. I barely answer my mobile at home. It’s good to know that I don’t have to open email unless I want to. I have my mobile, but I’m not attached to it. The amount of mental energy involved in staying in touch is a waste.”

Just because technology allows us do something doesn't mean that's how we have to behave.

Carina Gutteridge, a British expatriate working in Bahrain, knows how easy it is to get stuck online.

“I can spend three hours on the Internet just surfing for the sake of it, thinking of things to look at,” she says.

“It does help me communicate with people back home, but I won't go online when I come home from work, because I'm online at work. I don't think it's healthy.”

Digital contact with work outside of office hours is a significant source of stress, especially when bosses expect it, and employees need to learn to put down their phones and have a break from the pressure of being in touch all the time.

When people talk about recharging their batteries, they rarely mean it literally.

SIDEWAYS News for fresh perspectives