Toastmasters Speech Number 8 (CC8) - (Visual Aids) NOMOPHOBIA

NOMOPHOBIA

Exit fear of public speaker, thanks to Toastmasters, Enter Nomophobia!

Switching off ones mobile phone is the utmost sin of the 21^st century. Your friends, colleagues, customers and bosses will not take it kindly if you cannot be reached for even a minute. In fact, the only viable excuse to get a matatu driver, cum DJ, cum moneychanger to lower the radio volume is to gesture phone.

We rely on it lock stock and barrel, and there lies the tragedy!

The study that came up with the new dictionary word nomophobia, found out that a whopping 60% of us check on our mobile phones an average of 34 times a day. This is DOES NOT include the genuine times you have to answer a call or sms.

How did we get there,

First, the mobile phone is not the first technology to capture peoples’ attention. Television has been used to shape a whole population’s opinion, credit cards to ratchet spending habits upwards and the internet to harvest biodata and profile people. You can imagine then what happens when all that vexing venom is put in one little container. 

The mobile is everything including love letter; overt or covert. How ironic that we should have to pay a traffic offence fine using a phone for using a phone! – precisely why I say it has made matters easier and worse in equal measure.

For example, back in the day when at least two subscribers had to share the telephone line and the operator was a demigod, the caller became an accomplished court jester, connoisseur of clichés and a master of platitude.

If you ever got through the operator gave you two to three minutes. Whatever you discussed and agreed on in those minutes was sacrosanct, sacred, a covenant and as such a call achieved a lot. Today all you hear is where are you? followed by lies, English football, a bit of gossip, a lot of babble and jabber, then more lies. We have sadly become masters of duplicity and mendacity, infidelity and rascality.

When not calling we are on social sites and rarely where we can get valuable information. Content that used to be delivered via Television is now delivered on phone, such that households no longer place speaking moratorium at 7 pm and thus denying the patriarch a chance to exercise authority The news message arrives anytime anywhere. You could be crossing a street or driving. I shudder to hear advice that when driving one should use hands-free mode. How vain! because the distraction is not in the impaired hands, No. The devil is in driving under the influence of the next big deal or under the wrath of loved a one.

Texting is convenient, very convenient, perhaps even too convenient because, one does not get enough time to decide whether the SMS is worth sending. Previously, by the time you put pen to the yellow, green or pink piece of paper adorned with a captioned dolly picture and a message; the only days I love you are those that end with Y;
by the time you doused it with a copious helping of Yolanda perfume and slipped it into

 a par Avion envelope, never mind that it would be hand-delivered across the fence, you were surer about your intentions. Today all you need is a few clicks and send. Suddenly you are wiping your running nose by the stumps of your hands among ruffians at Kibera.

This, This, This is not as innocent as it looks.