If
she had received immediate medical attention eight years ago on the day
she slipped in the bathroom and banged her head on the floor tiles of
the three-bedroom bungalow that her children built for her in Ogbomoso,
Oyo State, Mercy’s grandmother would probably be still alive today. She
would have clocked 85 in August, 2015. However, she didn’t survive the
accident.
On that fateful day, it took the
77-year-old woman about one hour to crawl to her bedroom to put a call
through to her neighbour. By the time she could make the call, she was
already weak, unable to lift a finger again. The neighbour, a lecturer
in one of the tertiary institutions in the state, heard the scream of
the old woman loudly enough for him to rush down to her apartment. In
the twinkle of an eye, he carried her to his car and rushed her to a
hospital in the town. Later, he called one of her children – Mercy’s
father – who resided (and still resides) in Lagos to inform him of the
incident.
When the family visited the old woman in
the hospital where she was on admission, the doctor said she had been
suffering from partial stroke few months before she slipped in the
bathroom, but since the old woman never knew how deadly the condition
could turn to, she did not tell any of her children probably because she
didn’t want to bother them.
It was a terrible day for the family –
and the pain is still unbearable to them till today, according to Mercy,
a 24-year-old Accounting undergraduate, who narrated the story to our
correspondent.
“While growing up, I remember how my
parents would take my siblings and I to visit grandma in Ogbomoso to
spend most weekends and holidays with her. I remember vividly how
grandma would put me on her laps and pat me gently on the back. She was
so caring and lovely. She was an angel. We would go on a Friday when my
parents finished from work and we would return to Lagos on Sunday
evening. It was lovely and I always looked forward to it. But suddenly,
we stopped,” she said.
Mercy explained that ever since the
advent of mobile phone in the country and her father bought one for her
grandmother, that was when the frequency of visitation reduced. “You
know, everyone could call her on the phone without having to travel
again to see her physically. My father would call her on weekends and
everyone in the family would speak with her, so maybe he felt there was
no need to visit again,” she sobbed as she spoke with Saturday PUNCH. “I
would ask after her and my father would just pick the phone and ask me
to speak with her, but I always wanted to see her. Later, he resorted to
complaining that the journey was stressful and gave reason that since
there was phone, there was no need to visit again. I was always annoyed,
but there was nothing I could do.”
She added, “So on the day I heard
grandma was admitted in hospital due to stroke, I was angry because if
my father had kept visiting like he used to, he would have known. She
would have complained about something being wrong with her body and we
would have sought medical care for her. Neglect made her to die.
“I tell my friends today, there is
nothing better than one-on-one relationship, I visit them and they visit
me. I don’t want any of my loved ones to be a victim of mobile
technology usage again. It can never be compared with real life
communication.”
Her argument up till last Tuesday when
she narrated the incident about her grandmother to our correspondent was
that she wouldn’t have died at that time if her parents had not been
contented with communicating with her via the phone only. Mercy is
perhaps different in many ways from many young and old people today that
would rather stay glued to their mobile devices to communicate with
their loved ones, thanks to the internet and social media.
With the advent of the internet,
especially mobile technology and social media, many Nigerians, like
their counterparts around the world, have taken communication with their
loved ones beyond offline to the cyberspace.
Meanwhile, studies have indicated that
the number of smartphone users worldwide would surpass 2.2 billion in
2016 – up from 1.9 billion in 2015, according to an online researcher, eMarketer.
In Nigeria already, there are 55 million
internet users with a 32 per cent internet penetration; there are 114
million mobile subscriptions with a mobile penetration of 65 per cent;
and on the social media space, a whopping 11 million are on Facebook with a penetration of 6 per cent – plus millions more on WhatsApp, Twitter, BBM and other platforms when combined together, according to a 2014 report compiled by We Are Social.
Though she had a smartphone, Blessing
Okon wanted real discussion with her childhood friend, Jessica, about
the performance of her favourite artiste at a recent awards dinner that
she couldn’t watch on TV. She felt insulted when the latter’s response
was “Go and watch it on YouTube.”
“In other words, she told me not to
disturb her or perhaps she was saying that she was too busy to talk to
me. I seriously felt it was an insult because we’ve been friends for
years and we’ve always discussed. I was surprised she said that. I knew I
could have watched it on YouTube, but I just felt like we should have a gist that day,” Okon told Saturday PUNCH,
adding that, “I love what technology is doing for us, but I feel it’s
breaking real world relationships. For instance, my friends that would
ordinarily call me in time past don’t do so again. They feel like once
we chat on social media, we don’t need to call ourselves again. Though
the social media could be a cheap way of communicating, they are also
costly in the other way round to me.”
It is costly indeed, especially to Mrs.
Felicia Omobolade, whose five children all live in the cities. Though
she has a phone to communicate with them, she said she does feel lonely
many times as she could not see their faces. She said, “My children only
call me. I would love to see them almost every time, but I know they
have to work so I don’t like bothering them. They told me it’s the
technology age and bought me a phone that I should be using to send them
messages on Facebook and WhatsApp, but I don’t know
how to use those services. They said I could see their faces on the
phone. A mother knows it cannot be like seeing them. We carry them in
the womb for nine months and that makes us feel much more connected to
them. That problem of loneliness cannot be solved by Facebook or whatever it is called.”
A Nigerian cleric who resides in Benin Republic, John Oladapo, told Saturday PUNCH
his relatives feel same way as Mrs. Omobolade because there is no way
he could be making frequent visits to them due to the long distance.
He said, “I can pick my phone and call
them anytime, any day, anywhere, but I know it is true you can’t feel
connected with someone you only hear on the phone or chat with on the
social media because those things are not real life platforms. There’s
no doubt, these services are solving some of our problems, but there
will always be the other side of the coin to every issue. I remember
those days when I was in Nigeria and I would visit friends and families
from house to house. Even if it were possible today, people everywhere
are busy. Everyone hooks up on Skype, Facebook and the rest.
“Family aside, evangelism is better done
today via the internet but it also has its disadvantages. It is still
good to visit people rather than relying on the internet. Real
connection with real people takes place in real life, not on the phone.
Deals are better done when you meet with the person you’re dealing with
rather than thinking they are what they claim they are on the internet.
The internet audience cannot be trusted.”
‘Real people don’t exist online’
That could have been the conclusion of
Cynthia Osokogu, if she were alive today. Trusting online friends was
perhaps the mistake the young woman made before the incident that led to
her murder about two years ago.
On February 27, 2014, few months after
her murder, a prosecution witness, Joseph Edo, told a Lagos High Court
that her alleged murderers, who lured her through Facebook, had
her death planned all along. Edo said Osokogu’s alleged murderers had
bought a chain and a cello tape few days before they used them in
allegedly killing her.
The alleged murderers were said to be in
the business of first of all befriending young women on the social
media, luring them into hotel rooms, raping and stripping them of their
belongings. Osokogu’s incident would be their last assignment before
nemesis caught up with them.
She thought they were real people, real
friends; however, they were not. They were people who would eventually
take her life at such a stage of her life when she was about graduating
from the university.
Perhaps another recent incident that
would readily come to mind and justify that real people may be hard to
find on the internet was the kidnapping of the Orekoya children. Their
mother, in desperate search for a housemaid that would seek to the
welfare of her kids, never figured out that as there are real people on
the internet and social media, so are ‘the devils.’
She trusted her newly-found maid with
the responsibility of taking care of her kids, but the latter’s action
could now make her better realise that “you have to watch your back when
you seek friends and people online.”
A Lagos-based Information Technology expert and social media strategist, Matthew Oladepo, told Saturday PUNCH
that ‘caution’ is the watchword of the social media age; otherwise,
people would keep getting hurt and burnt from those whose mission “is to
steal, kill and destroy.”
He said, “There are downsides to every
technological advancement. We can relate faster with ourselves in this
age, but people have to be cautious because as there are genuine people
out there, there are many more that are not. You have to keep watching
your back. You don’t trust quickly people that you meet by chance on the
social media except you’ve been friends before. For instance, I don’t
accept every invitation I receive on the social media. I read the
person’s profile to see whether they are genuine and also see if I have
mutual friends with them.
“If there is no connection whatsoever
between us, I discard them immediately. In fact, the truth is it is far
safer to meet the person you want to be a friend with physically than
making the friendship online. You cannot fully judge a person’s
character on the social media and you can’t see their expressions, but
if it were to be physically, you will. Better friendships are built
offline, not online.”
‘Digital life affecting real relationships’
Emeka Nwabueze, who lives in the Ketu
area of Lagos mainland, leaves for work in the early hours of the day
and returns home late in the night. By the time he’s back, he gets
tired, but not tired enough to put his smartphone and laptop down. This
action has provoked his wife many times, who feels her husband must
spend the remaining hours of the day with her.
“It’s not easy to put the phone down.
The notifications, the beeping, social media updates, texts and calls
are uneasy to unfollow,” he admits. “It is now that I’m trying to do
away with the habit, but not quite easy to cut off once you’ve become
addicted to it. I have to confess I check my smartphone every morning
before I even greet my wife. I only put it away when I know she’s fully
awake. It’s not good, I know, but it’s not easy.”
It is definitely not easy, a study on
how the use of mobile devices and the social media have affected real
human relationships has shown.
Two American psychologists, Brandon
McDaniel of The Pennsylvania State University and Sarah Coyne of Brigman
Young University in Utah, stated that smartphones could be the ‘third
wheel’ in a relationship and distract couples from each other.
In a poll they conducted among 143
women, three quarters of women in long-term relationships claimed they
felt that smartphones were interfering with their love lives while a
quarter claimed that their partner had texted during an important
conversation.
They concluded that being emotionally
attached to the smartphone and relying on it every minute might harm
relationships, stating that an increasing number of people in long-term
partnerships were having to compete with their partner’s smartphone for
attention, making it the ‘third wheel’ in their relationship.
Their findings, which were published in
the Psychology of Popular Media Culture journal, stated that, “By
allowing technology to interfere with or interrupt conversations,
activities, and time with romantic partners – even when unintentional or
for brief moments – individuals may be sending implicit messages about
what they value most, leading to conflict and negative outcomes in
personal life and relationships. That’s insane to say that as a
professional who researches this, but we can let these devices overrule
our entire lives if we allow it.”
Even with the most devoted couples, they
found out that once-common conversations in bed had been replaced with
endless scrolling through social media apps or funny image-based sites –
individually.
An employee of one of the banks on Lagos
Island, simply identified as Isaac, confirmed to our correspondent that
the study was true in his case. “When my wife and I come back from work
and are on the bed, I have discovered that she would be browsing
through fashion blogs on her tablet while I also would be doing mine.
It’s a fair situation. At times we could be on the bed for hours, each
with our devices, saying nothing to ourselves, checking different
things. If something interests her, she would show me, and vice-versa.
We could be like that for hours before we both sleep off. I truly admit
to the study,” he said.
But there is a way out to every problem.
A psychologist, Mrs. Funmilayo Adegoke,
said it was high time people realised the danger in being unable to do
away with the gadgets. She said, “People think they can’t do without
those devices, but they can. Ultimately, it’s about self-discipline and
taking personal responsibility for the amount of time we spend on our
phones. Just because we have constant access to the internet doesn’t
mean we need it every day.”
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