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Hey, Miss Manners, welcome to 2009.

I heard a segment on NPR the other day about mobile device technology etiquette.  (As a side note, I notice that most of my posts are inspired by things I hear on NPR.  What would I do without you, public radio?)  It basically laid out some ground rules for when and how it's appropriate to use mobile devices when you're dating someone.  In this new and strange age of technology, I suppose rules about this kind of thing were bound to happen.  For me, this is a really interesting area to get into.

You see, I didn’t grow up with the internet.  My parents didn’t even have a computer until the summer that I graduated high school… ten years ago.  I moved out shortly after they obtained a computer, and can honestly say that I never really used the internet in a consistent manner until around 2002.  The big draw for me – online bill pay!  The prospect of never having to write a check, buy a stamp, mail a payment, play the waiting game for the company to cash it was absolutely what drew me in.  And then I found “social networking.”

I fondly remember the first web community I joined – the now defunct wotmania.  It was a community based around a series of books that I read (Wheel of Time... if there are any other fans reading this, please contact me.  Since the demise of wotmania, I have no one to talk to about the new book!).  I found people with similar interests who could hold an intelligent conversation with me.  For someone with social anxiety, this was as good as it gets!  I still had human contact and interaction, but didn’t have to have the crippling nervousness of “meeting people”.  I became competent fairly quickly with social networking sites like myspace and facebook and have, to this day, many friends I met on those sites from all over the globe that I converse with on a regular basis.  And when I was in the market for a boyfriend, I went to okcupid, a free dating site.  Happily, I've been with the guy I met on there for almost two years. 

I bring this point up because I think there is still a lot of stigma associated with relationships that people build from online initialization.  Naysayers suggest making “real” friends, whereas many people (myself included) do not require a physical relationship to make it real.  I can email/text/tweet/skype friends that I’ve never met in person and it is a real interaction.  I value their opinions, I laugh at their jokes, I console them when they’re upset.

(I also understand the Dark Side of social networking.  It can encourage antisocial behavior in people who already have social anxiety, it makes it easier for predators to get in touch with younger kids, it facilitates cheating on tests and spouses… I don’t want you guys thinking I only see social networking doing wonderful happy fun time things.  I understand the downside.)

So, speaking as someone who is not a member of the millennial generation, I have become fairly comfortable with technology, and am getting more familiar with mobile technology as we speak.  To that point, some of the etiquette rules in the segment seemed to be… well, they seemed to be written by someone who just isn’t technologically savvy in the first place. 

I mean, mobile devices are pervasive at this point.  How many people do you know who don’t have a cell phone?  I can think of two – my 66-year-old father and my 84-year-old grandmother.  And if we narrow it down to people with smart phones – where you have access to email, facebook, twitter, youtube, home/work calendars, and the internet in its entirety – it’s still a pretty big percentage.  If I went on a date with a guy and he DIDN’T have a cell phone, I’d think he was weird.  I also wouldn’t find it terribly rude for him to check it in between events of a date… you know, when we’re waiting for dessert to come, walking to the car, etc.  If he was checking it while I was talking, that would be a no-no for me.  But seriously, who honestly thinks that the person you’re on a date with doesn’t have a life besides you?  What if his mom is sick?  What if his kid needs something? 

Using social networking for work is becoming more popular, as well.  Sometimes I get dirty looks at conferences if I’m on my cell phone tweeting.  To the untrained eye, it looks like I’m not paying attention to the speaker, that I’m texting my friends about what movie we’re going to see later.  But disseminating information is a pretty serious benefit of social networking.  If I’m not tweeting, I could simply be taking notes on a notepad application on my phone.  It sure beats lugging my laptop around.  Some people just don’t think of that, though.  It just looks rude.

I know that I live in the Age of Information.  It’s sink or swim out there.  My advice wouldn’t be for people make rules that ban mobile devices from their sight on a date… it would be for those folks who would to “get the net”[1].  Perhaps I have this point of view because I actually *met* my boyfriend online… if not for cell phones and websites, I wouldn’t be with him.  To ban him from those things would seem incredibly hypocritical… especially since I’d laugh if he tried to impose the same rule on me.  And if you simply don’t see the usefulness of social networking, try not to judge the next person you see on their cell phone at a conference.  They just might be spreading the good word!

 

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[1] This is a quote from the movie Wayne’s World.  When Wayne’s girlfriend Stacey wouldn’t leave him alone after he had broken up with her, he told her to “get the net” as in to gain understanding of a concept or idea that the rest of the world already understood via the world wide web.

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