Shabnam Dastgheib

Here in Jakarta, most people have a Blackberry or want one or have settled for something cheaper that looks like one. (SP Photo)

Jakarta Diary: Put Down Your Cellphone And Talk to Me Face-to-Face

As I prepared to come to Jakarta, I was warned about the heat, I was told about the poverty, I was looking forward to the food — but the Facebook-obsessed, three-cellphone-owning youth floored me.

No one had mentioned this.

Jakarta is a huge metropolis, so I knew there would be a lot of glitzy fashion and designer labels, but I hadn’t expected anything on this scale.

Attending a language course at a university here, I’m often surrounded by well-heeled local students talking on their cellphones, while “BBing” someone on their BlackBerry at the same time.

I spent most of last year at university in New Zealand half-asleep, in sweatpants or shorts, talking to my friends in person.

Most of these students seem to have thousands of friends on Facebook and are in a constant state of networking, maybe with all of them at once. It must take a lot of energy to keep that many friends going. It all seems exhausting to me. But then I’m relatively unpopular with something like 300 Facebook friends. I’m out of the technological loop.

I have promised myself to never again make fun of my mom for not knowing how to use her iPod. I know how she feels now. Everyone being on a fancy phone or three makes me want to hide my cheap Nokia in shame, deep inside my practical, non-designer plastic handbag.

I don’t know anyone in New Zealand who owns a BlackBerry. Here in Jakarta, most people have one or want one or have settled for something cheaper that looks like one. BlackBerry is where it’s at, at least until the next gadget comes along and is swept up by the trend-driven crowd.

Jakarta is a vibrant hive of technology, at least for those who can afford to tap into this system. Most of these Facebookers and tweeters spend time in glitzy multistory malls, the kind one never sees in New Zealand. Our biggest mall would probably fit inside Plaza Semanggi; our poshest clothing outlets don’t carry the latest Gucci, Fendi or Coach designs.

So, conversations with young, hip Jakartans often go something like this:

“Hi, how are you?”

“How do you spell your name?”

Then out comes the BlackBerry and suddenly I have a new Facebook friend.

I politely accept these friend requests. Not until I get home, though; I don’t have the world in my pocket like everyone else seems to. I have to trudge home, turn on my laptop and hope that the wireless works that day.

My friend bought a cellphone last week, and the guy that sold it to her and another retail assistant were her Facebook friends within minutes. They comment on her status updates and photos every day, though they hardly know her.

I’m fascinated at this steady barrage of posts, comments and Facebook status updates, which my new Indonesian friends change hourly. Profile pictures seem to change daily and new friends are added without a thought.

The number of Facebook users in Indonesia is said to have grown 1,500 percent last year. According to online statistics provided by Facebook there are now about 14 million Facebook users in Indonesia, the fourth largest national figure in the world. The statistics place the United States at the top of the rankings with 101.3 million users, Britain second with more than 22 million and Turkey third with almost 17 million users.

Though it’s not necessarily all shallow snooping into each other’s photos or keeping up with who is dating whom. Online activism is picking up momentum with online protests over anything from the defamation case against Prita Mulyasari to the state of television in Indonesia. The latter has attracted almost 4,000 users wanting to pull the plug on bad television in the country. Other Facebook groups condemning or calling for the disbanding of the Shariah Police in Aceh have attracted some 6,000 members.

I’m not sure how much commitment there can be to this kind of activism, though, since joining a group requires little more than a click of a button — and then it’s right back to sipping lattes with swish friends in a chic cafe.

Whatever it’s being used for, social networking is the “in” way to talk to your friends. But as young tech-savvy Jakartans pass me in groups, all silently texting — probably to the person walking beside them — I can’t help but miss old-fashioned face-to-face conversation. But maybe I’m just an old grouch already, and I’m not even 30 yet.

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