Feeling ignored in this new technological era?

There was a time when homes in Maldives did not have telephones. If you wanted to find someone, you will have to physically go to her home or go to the mosque nearest to her home during prayer time in the hope of meeting her.

The time of landlines came which somewhat made it easy to contact a person as even if she was not at home you can ask the person who answered your call to take a message.

Then came the time of mobile or cell phones which allowed you to contact a person regardless of where she was. Thus contacting people was made ultimately easy. You could choose to either call or text, with regard to which way was more convenient for you and her.

And when the time of the internet came, if you had a desktop or laptop, you could not only email but also Skype with video calls or chat through text in real time.

Then came the era of smartphones where accompanying Internet service rendered useless physical meetings because you can now not only call or video call or text or chat through text in real time but also see what your family, friends, colleagues, and other loved ones are up to; you can see their photos, videos, audio clips, etc., to give you a sense of belonging to a community or society.

But this technological advance also brought with it a situation or circumstance where you feel ignored, isolated, or alienated. This is with regard to those telltale two filled in check marks which indicate that the recipient has read your message. Then if she failed to immediately respond to you, you feel ignored, and start to think the worst of her.

"This is a dangerous thing social media platforms' creators created because it creates discontent and resentment between you and others. People's ego is hurt," a friend opined several years ago.

Fastforward to now where most people have realized that humans should not be hijacked or overwhelmed by technology and should have the freedom to act in accordance with their life's demands, i.e., despite our technological advances, we still have a life to live, undertake errands, do chores, and take care of a lot of matters, without been subject to becoming slaves of technology at the whims of others.

Most of my friends have now come to terms with this although there are still a few who are pissed off with me, complaining that with these new communications technologies it should not take so long for me to respond to them.

The truth is that it's just that sometimes it takes me quite sometime or days even, to formulate an appropriate reply, depending on who I am conversing with. And then there are those to whom I don't know what to say anymore because I have outgrown them or I now don't share similar interests with them.

For example, I would rather talk about ideas, literature, and the arts, and I am now not interested in hanging out, in cyberspace or in physical reality, with people who become happy occupying their precious time in spreading Lolly Jabir or Kai Zeen memes.

It may be that those things bring them joy, and fill the void and boredom in themselves, which is just fine as long as they are happy with that although I don't derive any comfort from things like that. I am not interested, say, in following Kylie Jenner on Instagram.

In a recent case, a friend walked out in the middle of our meeting at a restaurant, complaining that I was not talking to him. The truth was, for some reason I don't understand, I ran out of things to say, even if we were friends far back when we were in the same class in grade 8.

Perhaps these are the friends who are easily hurt when I fail to "like", "comment", and "share" their social media posts. This is actually quite a serious issue because their dopamine release have now become dependent on others' endorsement of them, which makes them happy. They compulsively check their social media accounts in order to get that endorsement which makes them joyous.

I do respond as soon as I can after taking care of "first things first". I do have continuing chat conversations where I and a friend may continue a thread of conversation sometimes for days on end by responding whenever it's convenient for me and my friend to reply to the thread of our conversation.

I guess I am lucky to have been born into a time where I got to experience both eras - when we did not have such advanced communications technology and when we have it now - so that I have learnt the important lesson of not taking anything for granted.

Perhaps what is "wrong" about society now is that the younger generation who grew up with smartphones and Internet do not understand what life was like back then without smartphones and Internet, which results in them taking for granted the convenience of life that these two technologies have offered them throughout the whole of their lives and can't imagine life without them anymore.