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Have Smartphones made our daily lives easier?· Have they made them better?
Written by Contributing Author
Wednesday, 20 July 2011 16:03
A short time ago, several of my friends and I were scheduled to meet in the Lower East Side in New York
City for dinner. As usual, no one bothered to figure out where the place was. After all, we had navigation
systems on our smartphones that would show us the way. I traveled in with my friend via car to Midtown
and took the subway down to the LES. Upon reaching street level I whipped out my mobile device as if it
was a six shooter and I was in the Old West, facing a critical juncture. After all, how were we ever going to
find this place if we didn’t use navigation? I was met with a feeling of despair when I realized that the
battery on my smartphone was practically dead. Perhaps I should have listened to what my friend was
talking about in the car instead of playing Fruit Ninja the entire time. Luckily, his was fully charged and we
were ready to move. He set the navigation point and suddenly looked a little puzzled. I asked him if
everything was alright and he responded, “Yeah, I think so. It’s just that the place looks really close but it’s
actually about a mile away.” It did seem odd, but who were we argue with modern technology. We walked
onward for a little while, following the directions given by the GPS. Still, I couldn’t shake this nagging
feeling that we were doing something horribly wrong. I looked behind me and noticed that the restaurant
was about 50 feet from where we got off the subway. Turns out the GPS was giving us driving directions,
although my friend swears to this day he plugged in directions for people on foot. Since the street was a
one way, it would have had us going in a giant square to travel the equivalent of half a city block.
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It’s rather embarrassing to be so dependent on a device that you forego common sense. As a society, we tend to
treat smartphones as they are ubiquitous entities, and that it would be foolish to go out in public without them.
But do they really make our lives that much easier? For the users who do not fully rely on them, smartphones do
simplify certain tasks. Still, even though an argument can be made that smartphones make our lives easier, I
hardly think that they make them better.

2. Smartphones allow users to be connected all the time. That is a bit of a double
edged sword, especially when pertaining to the work place. Sometimes a work emergency arises, and you
don’t happen to be at the office. Smartphones allow you the ability to check emails on the go, and
sometimes this ability will help avert a crisis. However, more and more workers are expected to be
connected to the workplace at all times. The traditional 40 hour work week is quickly becoming 40 hours
spent at the office, with an additional 5 to 10 hours a week spent checking and responding to work emails,
scheduling meetings remotely and doing other work related activities from a mobile device. When a co-
worker needs a question answered, no longer does the excuse that you weren’t in the office exist. From a
company standpoint, life is a lot easier due to mobile devices, but for an individual the luxury of being
connected all the time can quickly turn into a burden, as they are expected to be available when they are
traveling, relaxing or engaging in social activities. That doesn’t sound like a better life.
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Part of being connected at all times means that our smart devices know where we are at any given time. Before
we draw the obvious parallels to an Orwellian nightmare, let’s consider what it presently means. If we want to
know the weather for the next few days in our present location it’s just a click away. Restaurants, bars and other
social locations within the area can be found with ease. In addition, user reviews for these venues are readily
available. If they’re not, then downloading the Yelp or an equivalent app will quickly help you find an ideal
location. Once the smartphone has helped you decide where to go, a navigation tool will tell you how to get there.
Life has never been more convenient. Living in a world of convenience and composite averages does not come
without its consequences. A sense of individualism is lost with the rise of the mobile device. Part of the fun of
going out is finding new and exciting places. When the location is predetermined by a ratings system, the
excitement of exploration is replaced by the simplicity of what makes the most logical sense, based on past
reviews. While going to locales with high ratings may seem the right thing to do, let’s not forget that most ratings
are based on the opinions of others. A restaurant or bar with low ratings may have gone under new ownership,
and in turn become a fantastic place to spend the evening. Places with a high review may only have such a rating
because employees and friends flooded the site with favorable yet biased opinions. Using a guideline for social
activities is certainly not a bad thing, and admittedly it can make decisions incredibly easy. However, there is
great merit in exploration and formulating your own opinions, especially when the opinions of others may not paint
an accurate picture. A smartphone may point us in the right direction, but if relied on too heavily will ultimately
cost us a sense of individualism, littered with inaccuracies.
What about the built in navigation tools? Considering that a smartphone always knows your current
location, it follows that they will know how to get you wherever you need to go. GPS’s are nothing new, but
smartphones allow you to find locations on foot and offer other enhancements such as three dimensional
maps and street views. There is nothing wrong with having these advanced tools, and it certainly makes life

3. easier, but again this comes with a cost. Say you’re driving to a new location. It’s perfectly reasonable to
use your GPS to get there. You probably don’t even pay attention to where you are going, since everything
is mapped out for you. The next five times you go to the same location you find yourself still using the GPS
to get there. Suddenly, your signal gives out or your smart device dies. What do you do now? You have no
way to call anyone and because you just blindly followed directions, you have no clue how to get to your
destination, even though you’ve been there multiple times. In this case, by trying to make our lives easier a
smartphone has made it more difficult. This is no fault of the technology, but of our tendency to rely too
heavily on it. If the threat of getting lost were more present, we would be more mindful of the directions
and would make a better effort to commit them to memory.
Use smartphones in moderation and you’ll find that certain tasks and arrangements will become easier. However,
generally speaking they are relied on too heavily and most often abused. Given the high costs, added work stress,
and a tendency towards laziness, smartphones may make your life easier but they will unlikely make them better.
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