© Edans/Flickr Creative Commons License

It was not that long ago that smartphone ownership was restricted to the professional elite.  Until recently, the term ‘smartphone’ did not even exist in our general vernacular, simply because the BlackBerry was the sole smartphone available for wider use. Not ones to be outdone, Apple soon developed a fierce competitor: the iPhone. It was the first smartphone to truly challenge the BlackBerry, and since its release two years ago, there has been an onslaught of smartphones created by everyone from HTC and Nokia to Samsung. 

Of course, all these new additions to the market result in markdowns of the ‘old’ smartphones, making them readily available to all. This, combined with the ever-increasing use of the internet as a primary method of communication, has prompted more and more people to replace their phones with smartphones, in turn generating even greater internet traffic.  Email – as well as social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter – is literally at your fingertips, no matter where you are.  Bankers to traders have been known to close deals using BlackBerry Messenger. 

Appointments and social engagements can now be entered into a smartphone and synced with a computer.  Reminders can be set so that no important meeting is missed. People are becoming increasingly dependant on their phones, so much so that it has become very easy to lose touch with reality, to the point where something as ordinary as a phone now dictates much of one’s day-to-day existence.

So with the continued increase of electronic connections, are we losing our personal connections? Studies have revealed that face-to-face contact is imperative for emotional and psychological health.  As coffee dates become phone calls, which are then relegated to text messages and emails, will we lose touch with the ones we love, or will emerging channels of communication actually bring us closer? Social networking sites have put many a long lost friend back in touch, but will having the application on your phone mean you will actually make plans? 

This is a dilemma which has been troubling contemporary society since those early BlackBerry days, and is one which hasn’t proven easily answerable. Ultimately, it is a matter of perspective: smartphones were designed to help busy people stay organized, but don’t let your hectic schedule take away from valuable face time with those who keep you grounded.  As the Filofax is rendered virtually obsolete, so will be the phrase, “I’ll pencil you in”; so use that QWERTY keypad or touch screen and type in a lunch date instead.