FINGERTIP LEISURE for Title Mag

Communication of today. 

What does it look like when we each have the power of communication, at our fingertips? We have the power to control whether or not we respond punctually, arrogantly, naively, lightly, or not at all. We can determine how long the conversation lasts, prolonging it or abruptly ending it. This seemingly benign mindset and process inherently clings to us - a habit that can be unshakable in how we interact with those around us. 

We have, so to speak, an ‘extended mind’ through technologies of the internet. “Some 45% of teens say they use the internet ‘almost constantly’, a figure that has nearly doubled from the 24% who said this in the 2014-2015 survey from PEW Research”.

In succession with the presence of COVID itself, communication with others in any form can feel impossible. Does the absence of one to quickly or justly respond to a text message ‘hinder’ friendships? “Hey, sorry it’s taken me six months to respond, but…”. From therapist Shira Etzion,“We're suddenly in this position where the way of communicating is 100 percent virtual and the technology that we're used to using for fun or by choice is now our have-to form of communicating”. Once digital communication became our only means for keeping up relationships, the act of it quickly became exhausting and at times, lackluster. We went from go go go to absolute solitude. Moreover, we became accustomed to the slowness, the somewhat motionless day-to-days. Surprise surprise; what was initially a lifestyle, became a state of mind.

But think about it: while in person, say you are confronted with a brutal question, an uncomfortable moment, that you don’t have the option to pause, to save for later, to research an answer for, to ignore. Unless we physically do run away, we are truly in that moment, unable to turn away the realities of the presences we’re confronted with, unable to hide from our insecurities, our verbal obstacles or our intelligence. Don’t they always say ‘live in the moment’? No matter how much we believe that to be true, very few of us actually know how to live this truth. 

Is the constant access to voicing opinions on online platforms and the extensive time we can take responding to text messages unveiling how we are regressing in our ability to communicate face-to-face? 

I’m 25 years old. I find myself thinking of Generation Z’s relationship with phones. I have not had these same or even similar connections with technology while growing up. This is all they know - phones as a form of communication, for information and research, for privacy and lack thereof, for ‘getting to know’ someone, someone as in a stranger that may be across the ocean. That someone being a figure of power, a paragon.

How does this ‘reliance’ affect the perpetual and increasingly unawareness of our interpersonal communication with those around us?

I recently purchased a pair of wireless headphones. The first time I tried them out, I was perplexed at their ability to block out all my surrounding noise. I felt alone with my thoughts. This terrified me. It terrified me in a sense that for the first time, I had the power to control how much I could ignore. I could whole-heartedly ignore my surroundings. No matter how functional and conventional they may be, this feels like some type of ploy for humans to continuously and progressively ‘forget’ and ‘dismiss’ what surrounds us. Ultimately, I believe this could not only lead to self-destruction, but a lack of knowledge about the world, an ignorance that we have the power to commit to.

I am so devastatingly stuck on the 2008 Pixar film, Wall-E. Despite the eternal happy ending, this seemingly innocent Disney movie left me with an incredible sense of forthcoming terror. We watched this film and shook with fear and dismay of what our world ‘could be like’ someday. But we dismissed it. A future of stagnance, of adhering to a computer system, programming and brainwashing us to be exactly what is ‘right’, what is ‘acceptable’ in the new world within space itself. I don’t agree with all the examples the film gave us of our future, but I do have an overbearing feeling that the all-embracing paradigm of humanity eventually heating up the Earth and adhering to certain forms of technology feels spot on.

This abstract idea of our future felt foreign and extremely one-off. In turn, we shrug off Wall-E. There’s no way we would ever allow ourselves to be this. I can’t help but acknowledge that this reality doesn’t feel so far off to me anymore. We do listen to our surroundings, we have every route imaginable to do so. Yet, are we making conscious changes or progressing in a means away from the possible future of Wall-E? Little by little, our technological advances will slowly lead us to a realm of reliance. 

Hell, Elon Musk is encouraging the drive for multi-inhabitable living within the realms of our planets. Is this an out? Are we inherently running away from our knowledge of Earth’s devastating futures? This concept feeds into many different outlets. I don’t believe the healthy response for humanity is the escape to space, to another planet that we can then ruin as well? Running away from the stark realities that we’ve created, whilst simultaneously refusing to address the issues, is not the solution.

Without proper acknowledgment of the strides needed to take for the survival of our planet, we cannot prosper. Yet, the hyper-stimulation of social media’s educational responses are overbearing. We think “There’s so much that needs addressing. What can I actually do?”. We shrug it off.

Social media activates our dopamine levels, similarly to food, sex, exercise, and social interaction. Considering how addictive those chemicals can be, could social media be equated with these basic needs? Co-existing with the similarities of food, to social interactions, etc, social media evokes elements within our lives that feel necessary for the happiness and drive of a human being. According to McLean psychologist Jacqueline Sperling, “when the outcome is unpredictable, the behavior is more likely to repeat,” Sperling says. “Think of a slot machine: if game players knew they never were going to get money by playing the game, then they never would play. The idea of a potential future reward keeps the machines in use”.

We are running away from the moments of our lives, and into the arms of social media’s acceptance in the form of likes, followers, and overall success. I think about myself at 12 years old: if I was excluded from a social gathering or an outing, I wouldn’t know about it unless word got around - literally, mouth to ear from student to student. There was no other form of documentation, no knowledge of your best friends’ location through their Snapchat tag, no green online status on Instagram to passively announce someone is ignoring you, or their Twitter retweet outing themselves of what they were really doing. I truly believe there are 12 year olds today that don’t know what they would spend their time perfecting if it weren’t for these platforms. They wouldn’t know the mere idea of living.

From spiritual thinker Jiddu Krishnamuri’s book, ‘Fear from the Known’, “Most of us walk through life inattentively, reacting unthinkably according to the environment in which we have been brought up, and such reactions create only further bondage, further conditioning, but the moment you give your total attention to your conditioning you will see that you are free from the past completely, that it falls away from you naturally”. 

Were or have we ever been really living? Are we entranced in the past and the unreachable, or are we truly seeing what lives within, next to, and around us?