We need to stop doing these things right now

I’m not sure if you will agree with me on this one but I think that everyone needs to stop doing the following things right now. For example, I think that you either stop following a Facebook group or leave it, if you feel that some members of that group keep posting requests for what you think are mundane or useless information. If, like me, you are inundated with personal problems up to your neck, I can assure you that if someone on one of these groups makes one more posting urgently asking for information for a lash technician, you’ll either scream, smash your fist against the device screen or throw it out of the window.

But a more rational and calmer thing to do, and one that won’t destroy your device, would be to quietly leave the group. Of course, you are free to exercise that same option on WhatsApp groups although, in this case, I don’t believe that there is a way to exit without someone in admin and the other group members finding out. Perhaps in this case it might be an idea to send a polite message to them explaining that you’re rather busy and would not be able to read all the valuable notices being sent by the members.

Now the Financial Times reported recently that smartphones and social media are destroying children’s health. But I disagree. It’s not only destroying children’s health but that of adults of all ages too. Moreover, it’s not just the device itself, something I talked about in my column last week. It’s also about what people are looking at or reading. Constantly reading and seeing pictures posted by friends and colleagues will either depress you or make you envious of their ‘fun’ and active lives where they are travelling the world or generally looking happy.

Travelling may not be possible for everyone, for financial and other reasons, but being happy about even the littlest things is. But in some families, being happy or laughing about something is not always possible. Some families may not have laughed for years because something happened a while ago or something keeps happening day in and day out. So looking at other people ‘looking’ happy can make you very unhappy and feel sorry for yourself. So, I think everyone needs to stop scrolling through social media apps when they are bored or have a spare moment from their hectic lives.

One thing that I found shocking when I looked at my phone one morning was that Google had been tracking my movements by default. Apparently it sent me a report of where I’d been in the past month and was asking me to verify it. I thought, what!? Now since I did not turn on location tracking, and I promptly went into settings and turned it off, I think everyone needs to examine their phones.

If you do not wish to be ‘tracked’ then turn off location tracking. I don’t need some App to tell me where I’ve been but I would love to know why the information is being collected and where that information eventually ends up. Who wants it and why? I’m not some famous person whose whereabouts will make them millions if they were to sell it. So what is going on here!?

Backing up your data is very simple in my book. Either connect your device to your laptop using the cable that came with the phone or get yourself an external storage device. Now I do not mean an SD card because I have now discovered that the SD is not as popular as the external storage device. Think about this. The SD card may be conveniently installed on your phone but to transfer your media files from that card to your laptop is not easy. You now need a card reader, something you may not have.

All sounds very fiddly, doesn’t it? It is. At least with the storage device, you can plug it into your phone, move things and then plug it into your laptop. But not everyone does either of these things. They do a cloud backup. Whenever people used to tell me to perform a cloud backup, they’d point to the sky. Do they really believe that their data is up in a cloud somewhere? Of course not, cloud is code for someone else’s server, perhaps even in another country. Therefore, is your data private? No. Is it safe? Probably not since it’s still under someone else’s control on their huge server and God knows where. And what happens if the server crashes or is hacked? Your data then goes up in smoke? Compared to that, an SD card is better. Okay, maybe you can’t get at it so easily but at least it’s still with you. So people need to stop touting the benefits of cloud backup. Because it is not a cloud. As I’ve always said, please take control of your life and do not let your device control you.