A suburban home is an island in a sea of islands, connected between each other through vast seas of asphalt. I use the word sea because that's the closest approximation to what it is, inhospitable to any organism besides those suited for it. We wrap ourselves in steel because it is the only protection available. We stay inside our air conditioned homes, and relegate ourselves to technology to fill the void in which social gathering once did.
You can see this shift in society through the attendance numbers of social groups and events like churches or town hall meetings. We have solved this problem of immobility by using technology to fill the gap. Why go over to a friend's house to watch a show when you could share your screen through FaceTime, or sit in a virtual-reality lounge to pass the time, especially when going to that friend means driving? When people used to go to churches, they'd stick around after the fact and enjoy some food and time with community, unknowingly forming deeper ties to their local community and building strong social bonds which fulfilled us. Now it's the Indy 500 as to who can screech out of the church parking lot the quickest so they can get back home to where the technology is.
We have, as a society, chosen to form ourselves to be with a closer union with technology, rather than allowing technology to form to us. We have changed our traditions, our environments, and our habits to better facilitate technology usage, and we are worse off for it. That is not to say technology is evil, rather our usage of it. Technology has facilitated instant global communication, scientific breakthroughs, and the elimination of many diseases. But as we have formed new technologies, those technologies formed us.
I woke up today to a weekly notification on my phone: My average daily screen time was down by 17%! I was pleased at this fact until I realized that it was reduced from 7 hours daily to 6. Without realizing it, I spent a 1/4 of my day, each day, the whole week, looking at my phone. Horrified, I went and asked my roommates, and they all had similar figures. I asked my parents, and they did too. I figured I was in some statistical bubble, so I looked up the averages for my age group. 7 hours, 22 minutes is the given figure by the American Psychological Association for the average daily screen time of a 14-18 year old.
I doubt better evidence exists of how much people have changed in response to technology than that figure. When my mom was a kid, the average daily screen time was however long your parents let you watch tv for after dinner. Now, looking at my younger cousin, who is 7, I see a child who is entirely dependent on the internet for entertainment. I shudder to think what her screen time figures look like. What effects does this have on society in the longer term? What does a society look like that has had a global communication device in their hands for as long as they were capable of holding it?
We are starting to see the effects in the United States. The most major symptom I see is a complete disregard for quality public spaces. My grandmother once said, "For a price of a cup of coffee in Paris you get a seat to the whole world for the day." She is referring to the attitude in European countries wherein public spaces are for the public - as in everyone is taken into consideration. For the price of a cup of coffee in America, you get a seat with a view of a massive parking lot, or if you're lucky, a 12 lane interstate.
These intentionally hostile spaces reflect the changing of culture in America as a result of technology. Why sit outside a coffee shop facing a parking lot when you could spill it on yourself while you're cruising down the interstate and cause a 42 car pile-up? These are the only choices given to us, so we choose the option which allows us to avoid the uncomfortable reality we now live in, so we solemnly pick up our Dunkin from the drive-thru and merge back on the highway.
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