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Social Media/Technology Addiction Illustration
You’ve seen them. Perhaps you are among them.
I call them “screenwalkers.” In terms of their state of awareness, they bear some resemblance to sleepwalkers and often face similar hazards. Sleepwalkers sometimes tumble down stairs, careen out of windows and suffer other damaging falls. In kind, the social media junkyard provides lots of videos of screenwalkers smacking into trees, parked cars, doors and even nose diving into fountain pools, as well as myriad other obstacles.
When doing my morning yoga routine, I see them shuffling by on the neighborhood sidewalks, sometimes pushing baby carriages or walking dogs. Face planted on their screens, usually smartphones, they ghost through the world like zombies, on occasion with similar facial expressions.
While present in the physical world, these folks are cognitively elsewhere. This split screen existence (pun intended) is illustrated by a line from the comedy troupe Firesign Theater who crooned, “How can you be in two places at once when you’re not anywhere at all?” Seems to fit.
Ensnared by Devices
Look, I realize there are good reasons for engaging with these devices, that they are deeply intertwined with our work and personal lives. However, given that the average adult spends seven hours a day staring at screens, often doing so while walking, sitting with others, going to the bathroom or, heaven forbid, driving, the whole scenario feels like a tragic comedy.
Not unlike the creatures in the movie Alien that lock on to the face of their human host and impregnate them with a gestating alien egg, smartphones do something similar to our brains, but psychologically. Once infected, the human host interacts with that device intently and frequently, sometimes more than with their fellow Homo sapiens.
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If sufficiently addicted, screenwalkers become less emotionally intelligent (research backs this up). After all, when your constant companion doesn’t require empathy, deep conversation or terms of endearment, you get lazy. This dispassionate indifference can begin seeping into one’s human interactions, which suffer accordingly. If you spend more time texting people or watching cute cat videos than truly socializing with members of your species, don’t expect to remain good at doing so.
Comatose Life
Not long ago, a screenwalker almost took me out on a stairway, me going up and she descending. It was a two-lane affair, so to speak, but she was smack in the middle. Fortunately, just before she careened into me, I saw her agape, defocused gaze and grabbed the railing.
Startled by our crash, she blurted out a brief, mumbled apology and then resumed her descent, her face once again locked on her smartphone’s screen. I didn’t speak what I thought, which was “Enjoy your life in a coma.”
Of particular concern are the yappy screenwalkers. You know, they are speaking to their smartphone as they amble along and, ostensibly, there’s another human on the other end. Although, increasingly, they are talking to chatbots, who also live in that little handheld computer we call a phone.
I’m more of a private person, so the thought of sitting in a restaurant, on an airplane or even on a park bench with other people around and conducting a conversation is just not my thing, so there’s my bias. Nonetheless, what I find fascinating about yappy screenwalkers is their willingness to broadcast their personal saga to strangers, most of whom are not the least bit interested. Count me among them.
Obviously, none of this is the smartphone’s fault. Screenwalkers are simply a demonstration of what happens to some humans when they get a shiny new toy and then bequeath it their autonomy. That’s how we know when technology is psychologically and socially harmful; when it becomes the master and one is relegated to servant.
The thing screenwalkers and many technology geeks don’t grasp is summarized in this quote from humanistic psychologist Rollo May: “Technology is the knack of so arranging the world that we don’t experience it.”
