Now, we’ve heard it all before- the generations before us constantly hounding us on being on our phones, about not looking up enough, about being way too immersed in a world that isn’t even real, about not getting our priorities straight. And us, the millenials, constantly roll our eyes and say there’s nothing wrong with how we are and that we are just simply a product of a different generation. That the difference between us and our parents is not necessarily a bad one, it’s just simply that- a neutral difference.
I’m not here to lecture anyone on how we need to connect to those around us and how we are socially failing as a generation. I’m here to simply speculate why it is that it is getting increasingly difficult to develop full-fledged, functioning connections in today’s society. One theory I have is this attention-shift we’ve all participated in. Looking down at our phones all day is draining. We are so invested in the lives of others (when it’s on our phones and convenient), that we leave so little energy for the people and stimuli in our lives right in front of us. Our constant concerns lie in these devices we carry around with us 24/7 which lead us to slowly neglect those around us.
I have to take a shuttle from my apartment everyday to get to school and I can’t help but notice that everyone is either on their phones or they have their ear-buds plugged in. They’re literally connecting with their phones and failing to really look up and engage in the present moment. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if phones didn’t exist and we all were sitting on that bus with no distraction in front of us. What would the bus ride be like? It may just be a super long ride without any mingling but there’s always that chance that people would come to the conclusion that it really isn’t that bad to strike up a conversation with a stranger and have some kind of interaction.
It’s not something we do on purpose, and it’s not something we ever really wanted, there’s just been a shift in priorities. Instead of prioritizing the people in front of us, our generation seems to prioritize watching Snapchat stories of people we barely know and making sure that one picture is edited perfectly for Instagram. With all this time and energy spent making sure our social media is up to par, where is the time to foster meaningful relationships?
I think one important shift we should all try to make is the shift from caring so much on temporary bouts of excitement and artificial forms of self-reassurance and focus on developing more intimate relationships with the people around us. Even if we don’t feel like we have ‘close’ people in our lives, I think it’s safe to say that it wouldn’t hurt to put ourselves in seemingly uncomfortable or vulnerable positions to find more people to open to. Going out and being more extroverted is 100x more rewarding than feeling connected to people through social media. It’s very easy to get caught up in this virtual world we are all involved in and I’m not going to sit here and pretend I’m above anyone else- I do it too.
We all do. We’re all concerned with social media and that’s okay, to an extent. But taking a step back from our day-to-day lives and re-evaluating the significance we place in this online world versus the one that we’re actually living in, is something that could benefit us all.
