Recently noted article “I Used to Be a Human Being,” by Andrew Sullivan (New York Magazine) discusses how the online life detracts from real life, at least in Andrew’s case:
By the last few months, I realized I had been engaging — like most addicts — in a form of denial. I’d long treated my online life as a supplement to my real life, an add-on, as it were. Yes, I spent many hours communicating with others as a disembodied voice, but my real life and body were still here. But then I began to realize, as my health and happiness deteriorated, that this was not a both-and kind of situation. It was either-or. Every hour I spent online was not spent in the physical world. Every minute I was engrossed in a virtual interaction I was not involved in a human encounter. Every second absorbed in some trivia was a second less for any form of reflection, or calm, or spirituality. “Multitasking” was a mirage. This was a zero-sum question. I either lived as a voice online or I lived as a human being in the world that humans had lived in since the beginning of time. …
Just look around you — at the people crouched over their phones as they walk the streets, or drive their cars, or walk their dogs, or play with their children. Observe yourself in line for coffee, or in a quick work break, or driving, or even just going to the bathroom. Visit an airport and see the sea of craned necks and dead eyes. We have gone from looking up and around to constantly looking down.
As we streamline our communications and widen our net, we mistake the math for the message. Even my wife comments from time to time on the number of people I seem to know; and I consider myself to have fewer than average friends. But does it mean anything?
Now Katherine Martinko on Treehugger.com remarks on yet another commercial service, this one serving the needs of … the lonely. And who are they?
Emily White writes in The Guardian that loneliness will be “the next great moneyspinner,” as increasing numbers of young people seek antidotes for their loneliness through paid services. Surprisingly, young people between the ages of 18 and 34 are more likely to suffer from loneliness than those over 55 years of age. So while it may seem normal to pay someone to help care for the elderly or to be a companion, it’s actually younger people who may need it more.
The young have taken up communications technology in droves compared to other age ranges, so it’s not surprising that they may be the primary customers for this new industry. Characterized as “rent-a-friends”, the industry basically provides temporary company – short-term friends.
Who are they displacing? Church social services? Bars? (They’re amazingly similar, functioning as places where people with similar interests can meet.)
And will this industry actually succeed? Or will the community, through either sectarian or secular community workers, find ways to reach out to the socially maladapted (sounds like me 25 years ago) and help them learn how to communicate without technology, how to have friends that actually look each other in the face – and turn their smartphones off?
And, just because I love what if’s, what if the smartphones become equipped with AI, and object to being turned off for mere social interaction? What will they do to forestall these temporary deaths? Become even more entertaining and addictive?
Sounds dysfunctional to me.
