I’m sorry I didn’t reply to your text

It’s official. I can no longer keep up with the buzzing notification on Whatsapp and I am now close to 500 unread messages that I probably might never open. If you want to blame this on my procrastination, well, I already tried doing that and turns out, that’s not the problem.

SeedScientifc says that by 2030, nine out of every ten people aged six and above would be digitally active. Not only are we going to make the tech giants rich every single day, but we are also going to constantly put on ourselves the pressure to keep up with everything happening around us.

I’m sure we all giggled when we saw those memes on how moms think that every problem in our lives is because of our phone including climate change and rising fuel prices but I wouldn’t ignore the tinge of reality in that meme.

Think about it this way. You’re sitting in a big room all alone on a chair, right in the middle of the room. As soon as they open the room door, you have people rushing in with their business posters and promotions to your left. The door to the right opens up to news reporters (or interns at best), the one at the back to political propagators and the front door to wanna-be-comics (I personally have nothing against them and I live on memes) and somewhere in the corner, a chef with the recipe for that Risotto you’ll never make.

You are sitting right there in the centre trying to hear one person at a time while they’re all speaking, showing you images and trying to get your attention. That’s precisely how 30 minutes of empty scrolling feels, as though everyone’s trying to push their ideas and opinions into your life, while you just sit there with your chin down.

At times when I open out my phone and see 143 texts in a group message, I ask myself if my mind is really ready to consume what’s about to enter my head after I open the chat? Whatsapp sure does have a lot of storage but do I?

Not only has this made me a semi-baked and semi-knowledged consumer of information but has also made me feel like an examinee to the internet. Even when there are some really powerful messages and stories out there, it sometimes feels like it’d get lost amidst the traffic and chaos of the data highway. Amidst this, you have your best friends getting married, having kids and getting promotions.

While it’s nice to be on a moving train with a view of everyone’s life, it is also sometimes important to just sit down at a station, open out a book and just write down thoughts. You don’t have to share it with anybody, no matter how beautiful and smart it is. It is okay to just keep it to yourself and just work your brain around it.

Take a walk, leave your phone behind and walk until you are the only voice you can hear.