Vacations in the Smartphone Era

Most of us know the impact our smartphones and tablets have on our vacations: checking mails (personal and office) is the most obvious one. You start reading a book on your iPad and ooh, there are messages on Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp. The beauty of the place demands a selfie be taken and posted; and then the narcissistic you wants to keep checking the number of “likes” your photo got.

This problem is so bad that we now need tips on how to live like we used to before we became “dead-eyed, slack-jawed phone zombies who only manage to feed ourselves because an app reminds us to”, says Alex Balk.

Nick Bilton points out that the obvious solution (not taking our gadgets with us on vacations) is not really an option because:

“That ignores the fact that our devices have replaced some vacation essentials, including physical books, magazines, music player, cameras, maps and in-flight entertainment.”

Of course, after a tremendous exercise of will power, you can choose to carry the phone but not the iPad. Instead take “a print book or Kindle”, says Bilton. And for the phone itself, put it on Airplane mode:

“This way, you can still listen to music, take photos and read, but you can’t connect to the Internet.”

C’mon, you say. I need to get directions from the phone. Well then:

“Go to your phone’s settings to enable (or disable) the cellular data capabilities for certain apps…Turn on maps…turn off email and social media apps like Facebook and Twitter.”

Boy, it’s so much effort to vacation like the good old times before the smartphone was invented!