EDITORIAL

The connection placebo

Posted 4/19/23

As I get older, and see my own nieces growing, I am starting to understand all the discomfort older generations have for cell phones and technology. While they’re definitely making a lot of …

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EDITORIAL

The connection placebo

Posted

As I get older, and see my own nieces growing, I am starting to understand all the discomfort older generations have for cell phones and technology. While they’re definitely making a lot of aspects of life easier, they are also making some of the most important parts more difficult and in some ways more dangerous.

I grew up at a weird time. Born in ‘86, I remember what life was like with landlines, giant unfolding paper maps and hand-written letters. There is no argument that GPS beats maps. E-mail is so much more efficient than writing a letter, buying a stamp and then waiting days for it to be delivered before waiting days longer for a response to arrive. Landlines, while maintaining their usefulness to a degree, are still clearly inferior to everyone having the ability to carry a phone that fits in their pocket everywhere they go.

So many of these inventions are, on a very basic level, better than their predecessors. However, new aspects of society that came about as a result of their creation were deceptively more devastating to what it means to be human than could have ever been expected.

I remember waking up in the morning as a fourth grader and leaving the house to walk about the neighborhood and knock on friends’ doors to see if they were home that day. I remember riding my bike across the main road, only at crosswalks of course, and making a trip to the candy store half a mile away. I remember when I would go through my whole weekend having no idea what 98% of my classmates were doing with their time.

Most importantly, I remember not having to compare myself with every single other person in the world 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Not long enough ago I watched as my niece, who was more fluent in computers at the age of 9 than I am at 36, broke down crying because a girl she knew posted something unflattering about her online. I remember seeing how she truly believed her life was over. I remember the days spent upset over a sentence.

I couldn’t understand it though. When I was young it was all “sticks and stones.” I know that’s not how it really works. Even in the past words could hurt. I remember walking into a room as an overweight freshman and hearing a classmate laugh and say “smells like cholesterol in here.” I remember it hurting.

I also remember that I was able to let it go because the only other people there were people I didn’t care about, and the people I did care about were there for me. Now, everyone in the world can read one mean person’s comment, and there is no community of in-person friends to provide support.

While words of cruelty have just as much impact online as they do in person, kindness through the internet cannot comfort the way a hug can. There is no longer a true community for these young people the way there was for us.

I can’t imagine the constant fear that one stray thought of a class rival could last forever, framed on the internet like the Mona Lisa at the Louvre. Today, you can’t escape anything. It’s no wonder the younger generations are obsessed with political correctness, kindness, acceptance and equality.

Unlike us, they are constantly seeing every example of hate, anger and shame forever kept on display online. Unlike us, they don’t have the upbringing that developed the mental dexterity to move past small slights because the internet makes everything seem big.

After all, they were raised believing every strange man on the street is a monster, every adult who isn’t their parent is trying to kidnap them and that nowhere is ever safe. Every time they look online another isolated incident of violence is treated as if they’re inevitable. Every moment they feel unsafe.

No wonder they want everyone to be nice. No wonder they want everyone to just be equal and be treated the same way. No wonder they don’t trust the older generations.

They have a more nuanced view of the current state of the world than any of us, and that view is a terrifying and unfair one.

Look where we put them. Look what we made for them. Then realize it isn’t young people who are trying to change what worked. It’s us who need to find a way to change.

This world is going to be theirs soon. Let’s not become another generation desperately trying to hold on to “how it was.”

connection, placebo

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