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Damon Isherwood

Disconnected by Connection: The Psychological Toll of the Digital Age

Man on smartphone. (Photo by Warren on Unsplash)
Man on smartphone. (Photo by Warren on Unsplash)

We live in an unprecedented technological age, where it feels like our smartphones become outdated within weeks, our life choices are judged through ‘likes’ and views, and the main focus of companies is competing for our attention in the ‘attention economy‘. Add to this brave new world the emergence of AI and you are witnessing a profound change to our world that is unparalleled in human history.

Words like ‘addicted’, ‘obsessed’, and ‘dependent’ are increasingly used to describe our relationship with technology—addicted meaning “unable to do without” (Concise Oxford Dictionary). The overuse of personal computers and online devices, along with their harmful effects, continues to draw attention from psychologists, IT professionals, educators, parents, and peers alike.

Person using smartphone. Photo by Absalom Robinson (Pexels)

Kevin Kelly, founding editor of Wired magazine, writes,

Screen culture is a world of constant flux, of endless sound bites, quick cuts, and half-baked ideas. It is a flow of gossip tidbits, news headlines, and floating first impressions. Notions don’t stand alone but are massively interlinked to everything else; truth is not delivered by authors and authorities but is assembled by the audience.

This hyperactive, quick-paced world raises concerns about its impact on the human psyche, especially among younger generations who’ve grown up in a world reliant on technology. How can children today focus when their lives are saturated with constant digital stimulation? The Internet cultivates a “shallow, scattered mindset” , exacerbated by social platforms like Facebook, TikTok and Instagram that amplify the pressure to stay “plugged in” for fear of missing out. Being offline is equated with the fear of being “left out,” a powerful hook that keeps us returning to the screen and can cause real distress when that “connection” is restricted.

Addicted to smartphones. Photo by cottonbro studio (Pexels)

It feels as though we have all, regardless of age, become victims of our own technological brilliance. Despite our advancements, there is no noticeable improvement in the human condition or mental well-being. In fact, the opposite may be true. Dictionary.com defines alienation as “the state of being withdrawn or isolated from the objective world, as through indifference or disaffection.” From a psychological perspective, the overuse of technology and retreat to an online world has only increased alienation, particularly among young people. Ironically, the desire for “connection” has led to unprecedented levels of loneliness, anxiety, cynicism, ill-health and societal dysfunction.

While instant access to information is undeniably useful, the long-term effects of this convenience are only now beginning to be understood. As technology critic Susan Greenfield warned,

We could create the most wonderful world for our kids, but that’s not going to happen if we’re in denial and people sleepwalk into these technologies and end up glassy-eyed zombies.

Against this backdrop, Meta’s recent announcement about the introduction of ‘AI’ chatbots on its platforms, designed to mimic real people, is particularly alarming. One of the main concerns with our new computerised world is that social media removes people from the ‘real world’. Now we find out that the ‘people’ we thought we were connecting with on social media are just algorithms; and that Meta has grand plans for rolling out these simulacra en masse in the future. This doesn’t sound like a recipe for a wholesome, sound, centred world. Who or what is real?

Meta AI characters. Source: Meta

Of course there are dissenting views. Harvard psychologist and professional optimist Steven Pinker argues that the impact of electronic media may be overstated. While technology may be distracting or addictive, especially for people with attention deficit disorders, Pinker believes the solution is not to reject technology but to develop better strategies for self-control.

Fears around AI in particular, are well documented. Eliezer Yudkowsky, a prominent AI researcher and co-founder of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI) said that,

Losing a conflict with a high-powered cognitive system looks at least as deadly as ‘everybody on the face of the Earth suddenly falls over dead within the same second’.

Eliezer Yudkowsky presenting at Stanford in 2006. (CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons)

Ultimately, the question is not whether the Internet is intrinsically good or bad, but how it reflects and exacerbates a deeper issue: the alienation and psychological distress that is intrinsic to humans. Australian biologist Jeremy Griffith of the World Transformation Movement puts the emphasis back on humanity, stressing that human psychological alienation is the real threat facing humanity and the Internet is only serving to accelerate this threat.

Biologist Jeremy Griffith presenting at the RGS in 2016 (By Press2014 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia)

The journalist Richard Neville summed up this danger when he wrote,

The world is hurtling to catastrophe…All these crises are man-made, their causes are psychological. The cures must come from this same source.

The key to overcoming these challenges may lie not in advancing technology but in advancing our collective understanding of the human condition.

About the Author
Growing up in Sydney, Australia meant I was unquestioningly secular, as perhaps only an Anglo Australian can be. It followed that my vehicle for answering the why's and wherefore's of existence was science. Recently I discovered that my great-grandmother on my mother's side was Jewish; and moreover, Judaism was matrilineal! With this aspect of my heritage revealed, a great need was awakened in me to reconcile the scientific and religious approaches.
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