Digitizing Self

My sister could navigate an iphone before she could even run. She loved to swipe left through my photo album to look for pictures of herself and when she’d find one she’d giggle before swiping left again. She could do this for 20 minutes without taking a break.

I babysat three little girls for a while, and when their parents got home from work and the kids wouldn’t stop asking questions and interrupting the payment process, they’d hand them their iphones with music from some game blaring loudly. The girls would take the phone and sit on the couch quietly while I received my payment. The TV volume way up, Dora the Explorer’s voice filled the room. As I’d leave, the parents would go into the kitchen to make dinner, leaving the girls sitting there with the phone and TV.

I was friends with a computer science major from Virginia Tech. One time while we were on the way to dinner as he explained one of his projects at school I asked him, “Is that really necessary? People can do that themselves. How far is too far when it comes to technology?”  He just shrugged and changed the subject. We only ever texted since he was away at school. Our friendship eventually broke down. We aren’t the only ones.

Computers in Human Behavior published a study done between divorce and social media usage. In every model studied, both survey and data, there was a clear link. For every 20% increase in Facebook usage there was also a 2.18 to 4.32% increase in divorce rates.

Technology, it appears, can be an easy replacement for human contact. But don’t we lose something distinctly human in the process?

We are quickly becoming isolated. Two years ago CNN published an article stating that the decline of consumers buying cars can be connected to new drivers who no longer feel the need to purchase vehicles. In fact, the purchasing of cars by drivers aged 18-34 dropped 30% from 2007 to 2012. The article states, “...mostly it's the explosion of social media. Car ownership just may not be as socially important as it used to be.” Why drive to see your friend, when you can Facetime them at the same time that you look at their past week on Facebook. They can share their life with you that way. But is this really a healthy way to maintain “relationships”?

Questioning the way technology is changing us as humans isn’t a new concept. In fact, it has been a constant question since the beginning of the industrial revolution with the Luddites. Rebekah Higgitt makes this point in a 2013 Guardian article. Higgitt brings up several instances of mistrust of technology over the past centuries. One in particular features quotes from 1892 with the printing press replacing handwritten letters stating, “We live at too fast a rate.” Higgitt goes on to state, “Cities, print, the novel (especially the serialised novel), steam ships, trains, telephones, magazines and more have all been held to be worrisome and probably dangerous to the well-being and tranquility of the young and impressionable. Lock up your women and servants!” Indeed, mistrust of technology has always existed.

Technology isn’t intrinsically a terrible thing. My best friend from high school moved to Perth,  Australia a year after graduation. She only comes home once every two years.  A few Facetimes in between visits are what we have to sustain our friendship, and we have. But only because technology allows us to.

My cousins live in Alaska, and on holidays we all Skype to catch up. None of us can afford a flight to visit, but we do have Skype to sustain us.

I find that most days I “talk” to a large number of people, but yet feel as though I’ve spent my entire day alone. How can I feel so alone when I’m answering Facebook messages, text messages, and emails (on four accounts), constantly? I still feel as though I’m on my own in the world.

I’m most likely not the only one feeling this way. A 2013 Newsweek article by Tony Dokoupil offered up a startling statistic; “every year since 1999, more Americans have killed themselves than the year before, making suicide the nation’s greatest untamed cause of death.” In fact, it offers that there has been an almost 20% climb in annual suicides. A number that another specialist thinks the actual number could actually be 30% higher.

The steep climb in suicides and depression could be linked to our loss of human contact, couldn’t it?

Many believe it does, John Cacioppo from University of Chicago told Newsweek; “The greater the proportion of online interactions, the lonelier you are.” To which the article made a further connection, “The opposite is also true: more face time, less loneliness.”  

If we all feel lonely as we cling to our computers and smartphones, something clearly is not working. We’re supposed to be more connected today than ever before.

Then why do I, and so many others, feel so alone?

In 2001, educator Marc Prensky coined the term “digital native”. These are the children of today who were born into this technologically advanced world. Children like my sister, swiping left on an iphone before they could even speak a clear sentence. They know nothing else.

So where does that leave those digital natives when it comes to the negative aspects of our advancing technology. Will they be even more alone than those of us who experienced life before constant connectivity . . . through a screen?

This isn’t entirely true of myself, either. I feel as though I’m at the cross section between Prensky’s “natives” and “immigrants”. I know both worlds. I wasn’t very old before AIM was popular and was an innovative way to connect. I was still familiar with getting on my bike to go find my friend Austen to play tag in the neighborhood. I couldn’t text him to talk, I had to go to him.

But I also grew up in school surrounded by Apple Macbooks and iPods. Our teachers taught us on SmartBoards, drawing digitally on a powerpoint projection, tapping to change pages. Our school had a contract with Apple that supplied each student with a laptop, and the school received new computers every time Apple produced one. We had innovative new learning that incorporated so much technology that I rarely had to turn in a hard copy of a paper or carry textbooks. I graduated in 2011, Prensky noticed the change in students in 2001.

Education has had to adjust to this change. Prensky saw the change coming, I experienced the change, and my sister’s education is completely different than anything I had growing up.

I’ve taken several classes online during my years at Penn State. There’s something very different about never hearing or seeing your professor. While I can still learn much from the class, group projects through email or message boards seem somehow . . . cold. I don’t know these people on the other side of the screen, and I never will. There’s no reason for us to ever connect in person. We can just email. Yet,  somehow I feel like I know their personalities simply based off of their communication styles through chat and email. Most likely because I have encountered people like them before in reality. But will that change as we connect with people face to face less often?

I told my mom one time that while I enjoyed Facetime, I felt like Apple was trying to solve a problem that didn’t really need to exist in the first place. You have to create a way to speak to people face to face? The name says it all, Facetime. But prior to their iPhones consuming our human relationships, people got plenty of face time. They created a problem they then had to fix. But the fix just isn’t the same. You are still looking at them through the screen, it takes away any physical connection, and makes it harder to distinguish emotion.

I’m not saying that technology is a bad thing. I believe it is a fantastic thing for our world. The way we are now connected globally is great. But I do think it is contributing to the erosion of what makes us distinctly human.

As we become less familiar with what it means to be human, we may also become more cold. I would not be shocked if we see more murder, more depression, more cyber bullying as we lose our understanding of being human, we connect with people less.

There is a balance. A balance between using technology to benefit us, and using technology to turn us all into robots with a lack of understanding emotions and one another. I’m not sure what this balance is, but I am hopeful that humans will start to desire humanity. Maybe, because all this technology is so new, we are diving in too deep.

I hope my sister, and the little girls I babysat, learn that there is more to life than our smartphones. That their parents will start to pay attention to them more often, not use technology as a crutch. Perhaps, we’ll start to crave one another’s company enough that the pendulum will swing back to a balance.

I for one hope we do. I miss being human.