Old science fiction TV shows and movies used to depict the future as a place where it would be extremely easy to interact with other people. Shows like "The Jetsons" introduced visual phone calls and immediate transport devices that would ensure we could talk to a person face-to-face whenever we needed to. Some of this technology is no longer the stuff of cartoons. We can travel at unprecedented speeds, and Web cams allow us to talk and interact with friends thousands of miles away.
Despite the advent of such technology, though, we are growing increasingly withdrawn as individuals. Leading a life in which one experiences practically no face-to-face social interaction has become increasingly accepted.
Instant messaging services are one of the main culprits of this emerging problem. Programs like AOL Instant Messenger and GChat allow us to talk to peers from the comfort of our own computer, disguising both our real thoughts and our true faces. It's not uncommon for a high school student to return from a long day of classes and, instead of talking to his parents or playing sports with his friends, retreat to his room to have long conversations over the computer. The computer screen serves as a social safety net and facilitates comfortable and intimate interaction; our emerging generation of socially awkward youths thrives on it. Yours truly even successfully asked out his first girlfriend from the coziness of his personal computer.
Teens can now use instant messaging services to make friends and enhance their romantic lives. Little reason exists to travel into the scary realm of the real world, where the awkwardness of words replaces the comfort of text boxes. Even office spaces, where individuals are just a few cubicles away, have begun to use instant messaging to accomplish daily tasks. Why talk to the person next to you about a project when you can just as easily instant message them?
Outside of the office isn't much better. Walking through the streets of a major U.S. city is now a dangerous endeavor. Grown men concentrate intently on handheld e-mail devices instead of paying attention to the telephone pole they are about to walk into. Even parent-child interactions have ventured into the cyber communication world. A friend of mine recently caught up with her mother over her laptop in the middle of a class.
It is convenient for people to be able to access their e-mail wherever they are, whether at a family dinner, the gym, a baseball game or on a date. But is it worth the death of a traditional social life? The other day, instead of receiving a "drunk dial" from a friend, I received a drunken message from his handheld Blackberry. The scariest part is that there's already an expression for this sort of act: "drunken-berrying."
The social problems of instant messaging are beginning to show. A teenager will get to know a member of the opposite sex extremely well by chatting online. Then, when the two actually see each other in person, they realize their awkwardness prevents them from saying anything to each other. A teenager might boast refined online dating skills, but (probably as a result) can also be completely clueless in real interaction.
Young Congressional staffers, the archetypal Blackberry users, complain of severe withdrawal when access to their portable devices is prohibited. A 34-year old staffer vacationing on Martha's Vineyard recently admitted to experiencing depression when he realized he could not receive any signal. Unable to go without his device for only a few hours, he asked an employee to take him on a roundtrip to the mainland, allowing him to check his messages.
In the coming years, we'll be able to see the full impact of our new social dependency on technology. The dating scene might completely disappear, replaced by computers and instant messaging. The size of a person's Blackberry may become the new determinant of sexual attractiveness as real-world looks turn virtual. Parents will check on their child's day in school by instant messaging him or her from the next room over. And, perhaps worst of all, drunk-dialing and real-life debauchery might become obsolete, replaced with drunken instant messaging and "drunken-berrying."
Scott Warren '09 was instant messaging his friends while he wrote this.
