The Challenge of ‘Staying in Touch’ in a Hyper-Connected World
Originally published on my blog
Back in the day, people lived in the same place throughout their lives. Life was simple. Staying in touch was never a challenge, it wasn’t even an idea. It was just something that happened by default. Why wouldn’t it? You went to school with the same friends all throughout, you married your high school sweetheart, got a job in the same town. Everyone you knew lived within a couple of miles. Now of course things are different. Migration is a lot more common than it has ever been in human history. You move to different states for college, again for work, and maybe again when they change jobs, and so on. And if you’re like me, maybe you’ve moved to a different country. Personal aside: I spent the first 14 years of my life in Delhi, India. Then moved to Mumbai in 2010, where I spent the next 4 years of my life. I then came to college in upstate New York, where I spent the next 4 years. And few months ago, after graduating I moved all the way to Seattle in the West coast. Naturally, my close friends from both college and high school are now scattered all over, and across countries. Such a story is certainly not uncommon in 2018. And so, staying in touch becomes a challenge and an aspect of life that I’ve come to realize requires conscious effort. You would think that with technology, things would be easier- we have tools at our fingertips that enable us to share our lives in whatever format we like- text, video, pictures, voice. Yet, so often I hear people say things like ‘I’m really bad at staying in touch’ … why is that?
I am not great at staying at touch either. I have realized it and I’m trying to be better. Over the last few weeks I’ve started a weekend ritual — I try to call at least one person every weekend who I don’t speak with regularly but is still important to me — right from my aunt to the friend who was my project partner for several semesters in college CS projects but lost touch with after college. But this still doesn’t quite solve the problem. I also wonder if this is a problem or challenge that can be overcome by technology or if this is fundamentally a human problem that technology can’t solve? Yes, we have texting and snapchat and video calling and all of that, so of course we have the means and if a person is still not good at maintaining relationships then it’s a human problem…right? There’s probably some degree of truth here.
… But what if there was a tool to help us ‘remember’ to stay in touch with people? Maybe it could also serve as a reminder for birthdays, important events, notes about the things they like. I want to clarify that I am not talking about people who are part of your daily life- your parents, spouse, partner, kids etc. Obviously, you don’t need tools to remind you to ‘stay in touch’ with such people- your inner circle, if you would. I am also not talking about your LinkedIn contacts or people you may see once a year at a reunion or a networking event- this is the other end of the spectrum. Rather, I am talking about people who are important — friends, relatives, mentors- but not part of your daily life, maybe because they don’t live in the same place or because they’re not in your ‘inner circle’.
I have spent some time working to build such a tool — it is far from perfect as of now, and requires considerable effort on the user’s part to be used as envisioned. But maybe there’s potential. More about it in the next post.
Are you good at staying in touch? Do you make conscious intentional efforts to do so? Do you have a system or a process or a ritual? Feel free to leave a note in the comments, or shoot me an email!
Thanks for hitting the clap if you enjoyed this article. This will tell me to write more!
