Dropped Connections
In our increasingly tech-based and COVID-ridden society, fear has become the dominant paradigm. We are afraid of each other, and the crucial elements of true connection - dynamism, honesty, chance, risk, open-heartedness, curiosity, vulnerability, and other scary and uncertain things – that come with real human interaction, are becoming increasingly lost. Along with them go the development of skills that help us grow towards each other and engage in meaningful ways and the building of neural pathways that sustain those skills. It is true that technology, when wielded the right way, can bring us together, but because we are shown nothing but bad news all the time – in the mainstream media, and in our increasingly divided social and political narratives – we are increasingly fearful of everyone and everything around us and so it is easier to disengage and hide behind the walls of our digital spaces. The divisive forces at work in our society, and the fear that they are breeding, are acting to push us farther away from each other at a time when we need connection more than ever.
I see this as one of the fundamental conundrums of our time: We are social creatures and desperately want and need connection, and yet because of the increasingly digital nature of our communities – especially in the West, where we already live in relative isolation from our neighbors, and where kids’ lives are relatively (or extremely) regimented by well-meaning parents – combined with an inundation of (sometimes true, oftentimes not) messaging telling us the world is not safe, real connection is getting rarer. As we lose the social and emotional practice that makes connection possible, we instead choose to “reach out” from behind our physical and digital walls rather than making effort to be in a room with each other. And ok, COVID is problematic in that regard, and we need to take care of each other. And, replacing real connection with digital connection means we avoid the risk of vulnerability, awkwardness, not being liked, not being agreed with, getting hurt, trying and failing…but it also means we miss out on the possibility of being surprised, understood, loved, inspired, touched, and accepted. This was true even before COVID, and now it’s our new normal.
It seems like every day there’s a new way to digitally get in touch, and I will say right now that after some initial resistance, I’m actually really grateful for things like Zoom and FaceTime. I use them in my work, to talk to friends, to talk to my therapist and, in a one-on-one setting, I like it. Not as a replacement for being in the room with someone, but it works. The ability to find the information we’re looking for with a few keystrokes is extremely useful. The problem with an increasingly digitized social paradigm is that we have come to rely so heavily on it that we are abandoning the practices that satisfy our deeper, evolutionary and biological needs for connection, and we’re forgetting that the internet is a tool, not an ecosystem. To live online is to live a lie. The scientific truth is that on neurological, cognitive, and emotional levels there is no replacement for what we gain and learn from in-person social interaction. Whether it’s in a classroom, a discussion over coffee or drinks or a meal, or just being in the same physical space as other human beings, we need it.
The potentially devastating effects of fear and isolation are apparent everywhere. Suicidal thoughts and attempts have increased as mental health has declined, especially among young people. Rates of depression, anxiety, and loneliness are up, as are rates of obesity, heart disease, and Type 2 diabetes (all connected with stress, lifestyle choices, and coping mechanisms like food and alcohol). In consequences that will manifest over the long term, the loss of social and educational opportunities has robbed us of basic relational and cognitive skills. The ease with which we slip into digital habits as replacements for those that take us into the real world is alarming, and understandable. Facebook and Amazon exploit our obsession with convenience; how easy is it to just order what you want, post what you think, have it all be anonymous and instantly gratifying? In a world of dedicated and unwavering consumption, we may have found our holy grail. The problem is that we are confusing convenience with connection.
Take online dating apps: They are easy, because you can in theory meet someone from the comfort of your own home or space or safety bubble. You can screen and dismiss people based mostly on physical attributes, which is degrading and dehumanizing but is safer than the uncertainty involved in the reciprocity of mutual discovery. It’s basically shopping, and it was designed that way based on our overwhelming commitment to consumerism and the idea that we can put out there what we want people to see or buy. Of course, this may or may not – usually not – be the whole story. Facebook (I will not call it by its new stupid name) and Instagram and Tinder and all of the various spinoffs are based on external validation (likes or right swipes = approval = I’m a worthy person) and on the assumption our egos make that people care about what we have to say/show/offer/sell. They might, or they might not, but either way it leads us to filter what we put out of ourselves in a way that we think will gain approval. That’s not social connection, that’s the buying and selling of stories. It’s the commodification of human beings, and we are doing it to ourselves.
We are in the age where anyone can be an artist or a creator, which is part of what makes social media so attractive. Unfortunately, like art and ideas, most of what’s out there isn’t very artistic or innovative, and social media’s positive potential gets buried under a mountain of narcissism and ideological conformity. Let me explain…no, there is too much. Let me sum up: Facebook’s original function was to act as a forum for college boys at Harvard to rate the attractiveness of their female classmates. I know that you can take one look at Mark Zuckerberg and be TOTALLY SURPRISED by that. All sarcasm aside, it is NOT a surprise that what has grown out of that original (juvenile, pathetic, misogynist, antisocial) purpose is a behemoth with that same objectification and chauvinist ideology at its rotten core and almost no system of accountability in place to regulate it. More than a decade later, the essential function of social media is still to act as a shallow, unmitigated, and narcissistic ratings system. The difference is that instead of “just” picking on women’s looks and adding to the fraught and sexist and dangerous campus culture for women at most universities like early Facebook, today’s social media platforms have expanded their reach to include in their objectification and judgement nothing short of every aspect of the human experience. This is embodied by Facebook’s new name: Meta, as in the metaverse, as in “everything in existence.” It is not at all a surprise that we are suffering.
Perhaps the most tragic thing about what seems like an unstoppable shift towards a fully digital future is that it is changing how we engage with the world around us. We see beauty differently; rather than seeing things as they are, being a part of nature and appreciating the nuance and difference and uniqueness and emotionality and limitlessness, we see things through the lens of Instagrammability and filtration for the sake of winning a virtual beauty contest. Likes have become the currency of human evaluation, and we believe that there are only so many out there (scarcity!) so I have to make sure I get mine. But, even though unlike actual currency, likes are so ubiquitous that they’ve lost their meaning, a sunset can’t just be a sunset, it has to be The Most Beautiful Sunset. My life can’t just be my life, it has to be My Best Life. Since I have to be what fits the mold, I can’t just be me. Unfortunately for objective reality, digital mediums mostly fail to capture the complexities of the human experience, but rather than finding (or re-discovering) ways of interacting with the world that allow us see and experience it as it is, we have decided that we’re ok with narrowing our view to only what has been accepted as Beautiful and hiding behind it – especially if we don’t fit that narrow definition.
So, what do we do about it? I was having a conversation with a friend of mine about the confluence of climate disaster, pandemic, and political polarization, and what we might do as communities and individuals to help. While it’s tempting to make grand declarations about what needs to be done – everyone needs to stop driving cars TODAY, we all need to delete our social media accounts TODAY – large changes aren’t always the ones that are sustainable over the long term. I deleted my Facebook page in 2012 and never looked back, but I have also deleted and re-started my Instagram account several times even though I know that I am among the 80% of social media users that feel worse about themselves after they use (drug language intentional, because it’s 100% an addiction, on a biochemical level. Scrolling and looking at screens stimulates our opiate receptors). I care deeply about the Earth, and I see clearly the need to reduce our geographical and carbon footprint, and I still drive my truck almost every day and also want to live as far away from other people as I can possibly be and still have reliable internet service.
Change is hard, and large or grandiose changes are the hardest ones to make, especially when human behavior is involved; habits are hard to break, and we have to work with what is, not with what we want it to be. Getting caught up in the “I wish things were different,” lamenting the past or spending too much time thinking about the future prevent us from taking meaningful action right now. As Nick Saban recently said, we “have to be where [our] feet are.” If we want to alleviate our suffering, we must act on the world and ourselves as things are in the present moment. In my experience, it’s the small things that we do – I call them 1 degree shifts – that have the potential to enact change. Making a 1 degree shift in your path may seem insignificant at the time the change is made, but what you’ve actually done is made a small alteration to your direction. That small shift might be away from your mindless phone engagement, or put another way, it might be a shift towards the people around you. In 10 or 50 or 100 steps, you’ll be on an entirely different path than the one you were on, accompanied by different people. You’ll be creating - co-creating - the path as you walk it.
One of the major challenges to taking even the smallest action is that we have, historically and now, been told that the unknown is scary, different is threatening, and that to change one’s mind is a sign of weakness and conformity. Look at the news, or listen to right-wing (or left-wing) radio, or scroll your social media feeds. We have almost entirely lost the ability to process nuance, and so everything has become black and white and all about conflict: Republican vs. Democrat, urban vs. rural, corporations vs. people, humans vs. nature, Good vs. Bad. We mostly surround ourselves with people whose ideas and views don’t make us feel threatened (I know I do), and stark ideology has replaced communication, and judgement has replaced compassion. The truth is that we need to acknowledge that almost nothing is that simple and clean, however badly we want it to be, and most of us are more like “good-ish” works in progress rather than easily definable good or bad finished products. What if, instead of limiting ourselves to absolutes, we acknowledge that the unknown is an opportunity, different is interesting, and being open to changing your mind is a sign of courage, respect, humility, and collaboration? What if the process of evaluating what is really important to you has the potential to help you make a small change that could put you – and your family, or community – on a path back towards connection?
Even in beginning to humbly and truthfully ask these questions, you’re already moving towards a change; it’s also important to know that thinking critically (as in, evaluating things without preconceived opinion and in the spirit of discovery) means you’re not always going to like what you find. For this reason and many others, practicing self-compassion is important; our small changes will not all be completely happy or easy and some of those realizations are going to put you face to face with your own habits, patterns, coping mechanisms, and ways of being in relationship with other people that aren’t really working for you. Change is hard, and you might have to lose some things in order to gain others that you’ve recently deemed more fundamentally important or good for you, or to move forward in a way that is healthier or happier or more full. Habits, possessions, jobs, priorities, values, and relationships – and pretty much everything else – bears examination. As my dad says: “Does your life suit still fit, or does it need some alterations?”
As we begin to (mindfully, humbly, slowly) strip away the illusions that keep us apart and make those small alterations that help life fit us better, perhaps the most important thing to remember is that we don’t have to do it alone, despite what we’ve been told and sold. We have each other, and real, compassion-filled connection with other human beings is both a powerful answer to society’s most pressing questions and the solution to our collective loneliness.
Originally published on January 14, 2022