Man is a social animal. We have always talked about relationships. Relationships are critical for us. Let’s talk about our relationship where we are spending most of our time. We use it for everything- cooking, traveling, getting directions, buying, going out for a date( or food or with friends/family), education etc. with our devices or in general technology.
We spend most of our time approximately 8 hours a day on our devices. That is more time than we spend with our family, partner, children or anyone else.
Technology has already overtaken our lives we like it or not. We interact using what’s app and snapchat, we drive using google maps, we ask Alexa for music or a recipe, we talk with pictures etcetera. We are depressed because of technology, we are healed because of tech and the list goes on.
We don’t need to worry about robots taking over us. We are already driven by algorithms- a slightly crude form of robots. It is a right time that we accept this relationship and see how we can mutually benefit from it. Ignoring it or fearing it is not going to help. It is happening.
Like in any other relationship we need to define where we need to stop. But here it is way more difficult as we are not dealing with humans. If you want to avoid a human being you can just move out, change the city or whatever but with technology you cannot. It is everywhere. The skill we need to develop now more than ever is willpower and contentment.
I believe we need to understand what we really want or crave for and strive for making it happen. Technology is just a substitute for it.
We can start with first acknowledging that we spend a lot of time with our devices. Nowadays companies like Apple and Google wants us to use our phones less. And hence they provide the tools that help us see how much time we are spending on our phones and to set time limits for each application. These features can help us know where we stand. When I used them for the first time I was spending 4 hours a day. And if anyone would have asked me how much time I spend on my phone I would say very less. Get a reality check!
We really need to understand our relationship here. How and why we pick up our phones and check say Instagram as the first thing in the morning. If we observe and see how we feel right before we pick up that phone and check the social network we can change that. We need to understand what is our need when we sit with our friends and family and keep on checking our phones.
Let’s acknowledge this relationship with technology and see what we can do with it if we can set boundaries and free ourselves a bit.
The technology already controls us, but we can still redefine the relationship.
Originally published at medium.com