Are we living in the moment or too busy with our smartphone cameras, taking pictures?
Imagine this: you are watching your favorite league game in a stadium for the first time ever, and it turns out to be a big match. With the final home run, you know victory is yours. The entire stadium is on its feet, yelling happily at the top of their lungs – their happiness rests only in the moment. But you’re not “there” – you’re too busy talking pictures!
Think for one moment about the same scenario but imagine yourself without a camera. You’d never forget the joy, and the way that particular moment took you away from everything else, leaving you with just pure excitement. When you were taking a picture (thanks to smartphone cameras), you actually missed the adrenaline shot – you missed the real high of that moment.
Camera phones have become incredibly popular over the last 10 years. Today, even the most basic phones are capable of taking high-resolution pictures. They are light to carry and they are fun to play with. Be it Nokia, Samsung or Apple, all the major mobile manufacturers have increased their focus on camera quality and features, enhancing functionality in each next-gen model. Modern smartphones are capable of taking awesome images even in tough conditions. Samsung’s Galaxy SIII and Apple iPhone 4S, for instance, are capable of taking really amazing, high-resolution pictures. Other less sexy smartphones are also capable of taking decent shots, even at night.
If we take a look at how smartphones have evolved, we see a burst of camera phones in the 2000’s, after the birth of the first camera phone. A few years later, we started seeing phones with video capturing abilities. With time, more smartphone features were added to ‘destroy the moment.’ When third party app developers started introducing picture and video sharing apps, smartphone cameras became more than a simple cameras. Today, we are not only busy taking photos, we then spend the next few minutes to share every moment with friends across numerous social networks. Not only is the photo taker not living in the moment, but neither is the photo viewer, who feels pressure to keep checking his timeline to see ‘what’s happening.’
Psychologists have argued on numerous occasions that happiness is associated with enjoying the present. If you are worried too much about the past or future, you are not going to stay happy for long. Psychologists agree that distraction and escaping from the present can make people less happy.
Although increased use of smartphone are preventing us from living in the moment, many agree that smartphone cameras have helped to collect tenacious memories – their contribution being greater as compared to any other device. It’s an ongoing debate, but many agree that having a camera on you at all the times feels good. What do you think?
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