Tech-Savvy Or Tech-Enslaved?

Mal Fletcher

Posted on: Friday 24 December 2010

Consumer experts and retail economists recently predicted that despite unusually heavy snow falls, UK shoppers would spend big in the week leading up to Christmas.

Throughout much of the world, Christmas has become the major focal point for consumer spending.

Doubtless a good deal of the spending again this year will involve the purchase of digital gadgets of one kind or another.

The latest smart-phones, with their bright lights, bells and whistles, will find their way into more than a few stockings. According to Vodafone, 25 percent of UK shoppers now have one of these handy gadgets and 20 percent of younger shoppers are online as they shop.

The sale of computer games is on the rise again, too – not that it’s ever been completely flat.

Gaming received a major shot in the arm with the advent of the Wii device from Nintendo, which was apparently so-named because the word sounded like ‘we’, reflecting the social nature of the games it features.

Recently Microsoft launched its long-awaited and much vaunted Kinnect technology, the first truly mass-market NUI, or natural user interface – which simply means that your entire body becomes the mouse.

For more than a decade, gaming has led the steady advance of computer development. It is now impacting mobile technology.

Games are a wonderful arena for developers who want to try out bold new technologies. With each new platform launch, avid gamers have come to expect major leaps forward in terms of power, graphics and the quality of interactivity.

This Christmas, as you pass around the digital stuff, spare a thought for the people of South Korea. The nation, though one of the wealthiest in south-east Asia, now has an officially recognised problem with online addiction.

In this technologically sophisticated nation, the internet – or people’s unguarded use of it – is quite literally tearing families apart.

Recently, a 27-year-old South Korean mum killed her three-year-old son simply because he interrupted her nap after she’d finished four hours of online game-play. On average, she plays for ten hours every day.

Not long ago, a 32-year-old South Korean man played games online for five days without a break. He died of exhaustion sitting in his armchair.

According to The Times today, South Korea had at least 930,000 internet addicts under the age of 20 in 2009. Young people will play games on the net for an average of more than 23 hours every week.

Why is the figure so high? In part, the problem was exacerbated by the high unemployment of the late 1990s. Economic hard times coincided with the birth of nationwide, high-speed internet coverage and very interactive games. Cheap internet cafes and gaming hubs became the place to go if you were young or unemployed.

Across the world as in South Korea, digital technology has been a wonderful boon to modern life. It makes possible levels of conversation and data-exchange on technical levels and across expanses that are unprecedented in history.

Yet while it is a great servant, it can be a terrible master.

Ask the frustrated parent who, trying to engage their teen in conversation, gets not even as much as a grunt as all his or her attention is fixed on a phone screen. It’s what psychologists call ‘absent presence’.

Ask the wife who finds her husband spending more time in internet chatrooms – or worse, porn shops – than in his own sitting room.

Ask the husband who finds that his wife’s taste for online spending, or gambling, is putting a growing strain on the household budget.

I’ve blogged before about the survey last year that suggested the average Brit has 130 Facebook friends and three ‘real’ friends.

A hyper-tech age requires a hyper-touch response. Like all good things in life, digital living requires discipline. For the sake of our own humanity and sanity, we mustn’t lose sight of real life while playing around inside Second Life.

In short, we need to become more tech-savvy while becoming less tech-enslaved.

This Christmas and New Year, as kids and adults alike thrill to the sights and sounds of computer and smart-phone games, let’s not forget the importance of eyeball time.

Create some gadget-free space in your holiday season and you’ll do yourself and your family a huge service.

Have a wonderful Christmas. Happy holidays!