A walk down the "Mobile" memory lane

Painful enough, I use 2 smartphones for both personal and business purposes. I recently realized I spend a daily average of 10 hours of screen time on both phones combined. Starting to worry about this number and shortly before I start to blame my phone, I thought of taking a step back to remember my journey with mobile phones.

1997: I was 14, it is the 1st time to access the open wide internet. one hour in the only "Internet Cafe" in my city costed $4 then. Yahoo groups, Altavista and hotmail were everything there is. It will take me another 3 years before I'm able to "dial up" from my PC at the comfort of my home.

1999: 1st time ever to own a cell phone, Ericsson T18, a gift from my father after passing high school. calling tariffs were so expensive for me that my friends and I started to communicate using "missed calls". one short missed call means I am on my way, 2 shorts would mean I've arrived. If you are so generous to call your friend from your cell phone, you'd try to speak quickly before the call timer hits 0:59 or you'll pay for the second minute.

2003: 1st time ever to access the internet from a cell phone, the tiny Nokia 8210, through WAP while testing our first ever web project at university. I still remember that special moment for us to see the web page rendering on the micro screen of the phone.

2004- 2007: have come across a couple of "iMate" windows mobile phones and occasionally blackberry and palm. Never liked any of them and always thought it was too complex. Still the need to own a "pocket-pc" as we used to call them then was not urgent. Accessing the internet was so enough from a pc at home or office.

2007 to 2010: I was a loyal Sony-Ericsson fan in the face of Nokia fans or even the sweeping first iPhone hype. I used to flex on my friends with my P1i phone with its mighty stylus, it was called a smart phone since it could scan a business card and automatically add it to your contacts :) of course, shortly then I had to let it go and join the new era of the real smart phone battle (Android Vs. iPhone)

2010 till today, I can't really draw a timeline, it is more of a very complex spider web with lots of stuff happening at the same time. the exploding app stores, twitter hype then the crazy-steady growth of Facebook. I resisted WhatsApp for a good while as I didn't trust an app to have access to all my contacts :) then I surrendered of course sometime late in 2011 or 2012 can't be sure. Here we are today, A big portion of our personal life, memories and almost all of our business circling in an endless "cloud" in your phone.

I can't think of any other device that had such a transforming impact on my life, work or even health such as a mobile phone, not even a car or a pc.

Thinking about the unlimited knowledge, business, connectivity and even entertainment I've acquired through my phone makes it really an invaluable device.

Can smartphones harm your mental health? of course they can and most likely they already did shape parts of our personalities and attitude in a certain way. My point of view is, there is nothing wrong in being attached to your phone, it is what you are doing on your phone that can really harm you.

For example, pointless and endless scrolling through like-bait content filled with social and business peer pressure can really be bad for your mental health, it is your fault, your choice, not your phone. Happy #WorlMentalHealthDay.