By Natasha Josefowitz
LA JOLLA, California — Most of my friends are upset that so many people are constantly tapping their smart phones, that even during meals with others they check for messages, neglecting the people sitting next to them in order to connect with someone—or something—electronically. I have seen teenagers sitting together in groups each absorbed in their individual phones and oblivious to each other and the world.
It is obviously a new phenomenon, this technology did not exist a few years ago. So what is the allure—maybe even the compulsion—to post messages to the world via Facebook or to tweet to one’s five-hundred closest friends? Is it the hope that someone will see it and respond? Or is it just to say: I am here; I am a living, breathing, thinking, person? I tweet, therefore I am. What is it that this continuous account of one’s minute-by-minute activities replaces? What is restoring that we had in the past, but no longer have today?
I’m looking back at my parents’ and my own lifetimes; what were the patterns of communication then? At the turn of the last century, life was still centered around the family or household structure: the father and mother, grandfather, maiden aunt, children, cousins, and servants. There was a large number of people bumping into each other and little privacy. Everyone knew where everyone was and what they were doing at any given time. Even bedrooms were shared spaces, there were no hidden places for someone to hide out unless it was a tree house or an attic.
So what has changed? The large family home and children roaming their neighborhoods unattended are relics of the past. The streets have become unsafe, and the nuclear family—consisting of two parents (or more often than not, one parent) with one or two children—has become the norm. Staying indoors watching television and playing computer games are solitary activities. What is missing? Companionship, interacting with others, community living.
Those living alone must initiate contact either by going out or inviting someone to visit them. This is true for the older population, it is equally true for younger people, hence their incessant pursuit of electronic interaction. Although we have lost the opportunity to easily communicate in person, the need for it remains, and we have replaced it with the possibility to interact with others via phones, texting, skyping, sending photos and videos of ourselves in our different pursuits.
Another kind of contact is now easily achieved at the touch of a button. There it is, the familiar welcoming electronic voice or brightly lit screen asking who you want to talk to or giving you the weather, the latest news, the time, directions to the nearest restaurant, and any other data you may wish to know from the obscurest historical fact to the latest football score.
So is it any wonder, with the whole world at our fingertips, that we become enamored of all these opportunities to escape from our limited selves into the clouds of information and interactions?
We are social animals with new opportunities to socialize like never before and so, yes, we take advantage of this still very new technology, and often overdo it. Even very small children prefer their parent’s iPad to any other toy. It gives them the control to interact with any image at their own speed and interest.
The newness will decrease and we’ll all settle down to a comfortable level between the need to constantly interact electronically, the need for face-to-face contact, and the need for quiet, private time. This all will shake itself out. We need a little patience with the excitement of the possibilities available to our endlessly curious children and equally endlessly bemused adults and at the growing number of adventurous seniors hooked to their smartphones.
So let us not be stymied by the new obsession of seemingly constant immersion in our gadgets. It has replaced what we no longer have and yearn for—touching someone or touching many or being touched—as long as someone responds, we have been heard, we have been recognized, we are not only not invisible, we are important.
And so, let us understand and accept as the new normal way of letting others know what we are thinking and doing. We are reaching out; as long as we’re online, we’re not alone.
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This article was previously published in the La Jolla Village News, Copyright © 2015. Your comment may be posted in the space provided below or sent directly to the author at natasha.josefowitz@sdjewishworld.com