For freedom, have we become trapped?

I write this on my laptop, with not one, but two phones next to me, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp pinging in the background. Ignoring the sound of that I ask myself, have we trapped ourselves striving to find freedom?

Take mobile phones for example. Created to give us the freedom of accessing calls, texts, and emails on the go. We no longer need to be sat in a certain place, plugged into a wall or poking an aerial out of a specific window to get a connection.

We’re connected everywhere we go, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. But ask yourself, as I ask myself, what has this done to us? I’m playing no blame game here, I do it too. We check our phones non-stop, mid conversation, at functions and events, during our working day, some…even when we’re driving.

Is that the freedom we expected? We’ve become so physically and emotionally attached to our phones these days; we’ve (forgive me for being dramatic) imprisoned ourselves into a world of technology.

Take a moment and look at social media. I am a member of every single platform of social media and I assume that most of you are too. We wake up we check it (all of the platforms), at breakfast we check it, mid-morning, lunch, afternoon, you get the gist. How often is it the first thing you wake up to do and the last thing before sleep? Designed to open up the world, connect with long lost friends/family, see things from around the world, show the world your life and even your business. Have we gotten ourselves into a state of addiction? Have we actually closed down and narrowed our own individual worlds?

We now thrive from being able to see and communicate at the touch of a button. I come across it so often in recruitment, “Why do we need to meet?”. It seems we may have forgotten about the importance of human contact and presence.

Now please don’t get me wrong, social media and technology is fantastic, I’ve made friends, business contacts and everything in between through social media. But…how much of face to face human interaction have we sacrificed in order to be constantly servicing our online lives.

This week I came across a video of author and motivational speaker, Simon Sinek, discussing the effects of having our phones in business meetings and the effect they generally have on our mental health. To cut a long story short, we could really do with separating ourselves.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0xYCy2eft8

Not just one; but two videos opened my eyes this week, with facts that are almost too much to believe. Businesses being on social media was never heard of. If you’re not on social media now, it may actually be one of the factors that actually plays against you. You may be inhibiting your business if you don’t conform with society.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWa8-43kE-Q

What do you think your life would be like if you spent less time on your phone?