Last Saturday my daughter had a mobile-party. When she told me what she wanted to do, I just looked at her and asked: a what-party? For all the people like me who don’t know what a mobile-party is: an explanation, it is a party where all the people come with their phones. Here it is all acceptable. But now it becomes bizarre: they don’t talk throughout the whole party! They just communicate through their phones and send text messages! So not a word was spoken. They all sat down on their chairs to write their messages! I thought that’s okay. Just a new trend.

I mean when I was young in the 70’s we had ABBA parties which were acceptable, eventually the custom disappeared. How ever just a few of days after this unusual party I went into a café and a group of girls was sitting around a circular table. They all had their Blackberries in front of them, writing their text messages. Whilst I was sitting there enjoying my coffee, I could not help me but observe them. They didn’t talk together. I imagined that they were all having a big conversation but simply on their phones. I was shocked.

When did we loose our speech? Why can’t the girls talk normally together? I could imagine that maybe in 100 years the population will forget how to speak at all. Their conversations will take place solely on their phones. What a horrendous image. When you then meet somebody in the street, you won’t say hello you will write hello on your phone, or what ever is “in” in this future time.

When I walked out of the café I looked more closely at the people as they passed me. All were on their phones. Sending text messages or phoning someone. It seemed to me that everybody was using the phone in this moment except from me. I didn’t realise that we are so dependent on our phones.

But why can we not live without this little thing? Why are we so dependent on a box with keys? The solution is simple: we humans are creatures of habit. We always want to do the simplest way and the phones help us with this immensely. I am always reachable (which sometimes is not the best), I have my planner all the time with me and he says me where I have to be in the next hour. I can send a short message to my boyfriend to know what he fancies for dinner tonight.

But actually this is a very new invention. 27 years ago the first phone was used. At this time you had to pay 3995 Dollar for one mobile phone. And it didn’t really resemble the little things that we carry around now. It was so big like a suitcase and weighed something around 800 grams. Not really comfortable!! The first phone that looked similar to our modern ones came in 1992. That’s just 18 years ago. When we take a look at the phones that we had just 3 years ago - we cannot think that we ever used such an old fashioned thing.

The number of children using phones rises steadily. When you go to the street you will see 5 year old kids phoning with their friends. Every second child aged 6-12 has a phone and nearly 92 % form the 12-19 years old possess one. In the one side that’s very good, because you can reach your child every time and they have the possibility to phone the police all the time. That gives you a feeling safety. It is useful but we use it too the extreme. Where does that lead to? Where will our communication go? Disappear into Nirvana?

I posse the horribly image in my head when I wake up one day, sitting with my daughter at the breakfast and then she sends me a message with her phone to give me the instruction her the milk for her tea.

I observed my daughter and her manners with technology. One of her habits has to sitting in front of the TV, “facbooken” on her Laptop and writing text messages with her mobile phone at the same time. She sees it as necessary to do all simultaneously. Only one element is not enough. It doesn’t give satisfaction to her. I see her in 10 years, when the technology is more advanced, in a kind of cabin doing all the things at the same time and this cabin starts to be her world. To chat with her friends become more important than to go out and do something with them. I am afraid to see her in utterly isolation. With maybe over 1000 ‘friends’ on Facebook but without ‘real’ friends.

Not just my daughter is dependent on mobile phones and other technology. We are it as well. The whole population is dependent from technology. Imagine an H&M who would work without technique, or the traffic system that would work without technique? We would back to medieval times and for some people (like my daughter) it would be the end of the world.

For me the technology is necessary and very important. But to use it constantly and to be completely dependent is simply too extreme. We have to be careful about and how much our children spend time on phones and other technology and pay attention that it does not begin to be their only point of departure in their life. poo