The Screens Between Us, Part I

From the advent of electricity to sliced bread and beyond, technology has evolved to make our lives more convenient. The Internet in particular has significantly changed the ease of interacting with each other. Some of us may be swiping on our phones in search of romance, engaging with keyboard warriors over social media debates, or working jobs remotely by computer.

Yet despite—or because of--all this hyperactive interaction, many of us feel lonelier than ever, as shared here by the World Economic Forum. Consistently interacting with others only through our screens can have the adverse effect of making us feel farther and farther apart from meaningful connection.

Modern romantic courting through dating apps has also been linked to increased loneliness —ironically, the very thing that gargantuan industry should be alleviating. Due to the anonymity and subsequent absence of accountability online, people tend to abandon the protocols of etiquette, resulting in behaviors and remarks that otherwise might not have been expressed.

In this TED Talk, MIT professor Sherry Turkle discusses the social consequences of our increasing dependency on screens. We may have come to expect less of one another than we do of our technology.

While screens have become an integral part of our modern lives, their omnipresence has rendered many of us incapable of separating the merits of time alone with the heartache of loneliness. At the other end of our screens are people--people who want to be engaged with and respected just as we do.

Today, endeavor to connect not with the devices between us, but the people on the other side.

"If we don't teach our children to be alone, they will only know how to be lonely."
- Sherry Turkle