Hand in Hand GAMEPLAY IN THE AGE OF MOBILE INTIMACY

We live in an age of constant connectivity. From enabling passive usage, such as letting devices track your heart rate or daily step count, to facilitating active personal engagement, such as ordering food, following a guided meditation, watching the news or meeting someone new, our phones are not just tools for communication; they are also mediators of our experience of the world. Our relationship with mobile technology no longer revolves solely around individual instances of peer-to-peer communication via voice or text, but also around ambient applications that record and respond to our needs. For the 89 per cent¹ of Australians who own a smartphone, navigating an iPhone’s touchscreen can feel as domestic and instinctive as switching on your bedroom light, or knowing when the kettle is full from the sound that the tap water makes as it hits the inside of the urn.

With the increasing ubiquity of internet connectivity, the experience of mobile technology has become more and more customisable, and through this, more personal. A 2015 study of American smartphone users showed that 81 per cent of respondents kept their devices with them ‘almost all the time during waking hours’, with a further 63 per cent responding that they slept with their smartphones next to their bed. The study went on to suggest that ‘the ubiquitous presence of smartphones While some of those figures vary in the Australian context, the broader picture remains the same: for a great many of us, smartphones are integrated into our daily lives.