How I long for my middle school days, sitting at home waiting by the house phone at 6:45 PM on the dot because that was the time my best friend and I planned our daily post-school, post-homework, post-dinner with the family convo. Or even later into my high school days in which signing on to AIM was my signal to the world (aka my small social circle) that I was available to chat.
Fast forward nearly 10 years and I honestly am relieved when my phone is dead because it means I have an excuse to not respond to people. In this age of constant connectivity, it seems it is no longer our decision when to disconnect. We are constantly available and punished for leaving someone on read.
Worst of all, it's making us incredibly awkward! It seems this ability to constantly portray ourselves in a specific light and view others in the way they are choosing to be perceived, is only making it harder for us to interact outside of social media and instant/constant communication.
Notification overload certainly isn't helping. How many things do I have to check on a daily basis to keep in touch? It's already hard enough to keep up with tone in a text message, do I really need to decipher the tone of 30 different people/texts? The overwhelming dominance of text over calling has made it impossible to really understand what the intent of someone's words are. Key & Peele certainly defined that best in this skit:
Sure, we can point to all the ways this is amazing; you can get in quick contact with your kids when they're out late, you can have immediate access to photos of your brand new niece or nephew and you always have a flashlight in your pocket. But, what about all of the things constant connectivity has destroyed?
What we now call ghosting used to be shrugged off as an assumption the other person was just too busy to get back to you. Now when someone doesn't respond to my email, I can message them on Facebook, DM them on Twitter or even stalk their Instagram stories to pester them with the question, "Did you get my email?".
Trust me, I'm not begging for the Stone-Age, but their is something about this ease of access to the lives of others that is just plain eerie. You sitting here reading this article probably stemmed from mindless social browsing.
I'm not suggesting we all throw away our phones and laptops (mostly because that shit is expensive) but instead take some time everyday to disconnect. Fail to respond, give yourself a break. Step outside and foster some real communication, you'll be glad you did.
