The Century of Solitude
This article was originally published in the March print edition of The Bark, distributed at the University of Minnesota Duluth campus.
In the past two decades, social media and AI use has skyrocketed with the rise of the internet. We now spend more time on our screens than we do with people, and this has drastically changed the way we think.
According to “The Anti-Social Century” by Derek Thompson, “Americans are now spending more time alone than ever. It’s changing our personalities, our politics, and even our relationship to reality.”
Most Americans are no longer reacting to the biological cue to spend more time with other people. Young people are less likely than in previous decades to get their driver’s license, to go on a date, to have more than one close friend or to even hang out with their friends at all.
Dr. Aaron Boyson taught a class in the fall semester on this exact issue; mass media and its issues in society. He believes that is the main reason why our world has been anti-social the past twenty years.
Two students from his class agreed to be interviewed on the topic — Mitchell Erickson, a freshman double majoring in Human Resource Management and Business Management with a minor in Communications, and Emma Saxton, a sophomore double majoring in Communications and Environmental Outdoor Education.
“In Dr. Boyson’s class, we did a two week long media fast,” said Saxton. “I think that taught us how to be human without the influence of mass media. What do you do when you can’t play a board game, read a book or watch a movie? It was a connection that no one in the class had ever fully had.”
Mitchell Erickson, Human Resource Management and Business Management major.
“The class really highlighted how over time we’ve become addicted to our cell phones,” Erickson said. “We did a study in the class that said that humans spend 70% more time on our screens now than we’ve ever done before.”
These students both share the idea that even though we are more connected than we’ve ever been before, we no longer have those deep relationships with people. We don’t dig under the surface as much, because social media has given us the false idea that we have a sense of togetherness.
“I personally don’t have social media,” Erickson said. “I’ve deleted everything. I had Snapchat, Facebook, Youtube, and I didn’t realize that it was negatively impacting my productivity and motivation.”
“I deleted all of my social media except Snapchat for group projects,” Saxton said. “If people ask how they can get ahold of me, I give them my phone number. I think [social media] is this thing where everyone hates it at least a little. Once you get out of the ‘I need it’ mindset, other people will realize that it’s stupid, too.”
Social media not only affects our motivation and our productivity, but it affects our connectedness to people too. Both students agreed that they feel so much more interconnected with people when they are not on their phones.
“I think the first thing our phones changed is how we interact with each other,” Saxton said. “It begs you to take it out and look at it when you have nothing going on. I’ll go to class, and the entire classroom has their phones out as soon as you walk in. You could go to class for an entire semester and never talk to anyone.”
“We have the choice to interact with each other, but we don’t. If you don’t interact with people frequently, you will run into the situation where you don’t know how to talk to them, and it becomes scary. You’ll start avoiding them. Are you now on your phone because there is no one to interact with, or are you on your phone so you don’t have to interact with people?”
Erickson had a similar thing to say; “The average screen time for a teenager in a day is eight hours and 39 minutes. It ties in that the more you’re on your phone, the less you’re going to make face-to-face contact with someone. We don’t have those deep relationships anymore.”
Emma Saxton, Communication and Environmental Outdoor Education Major.
How do you think that will affect us in the long run — that unmet need for basic human interaction? Isolated teenagers will turn into isolated adults, and the cycle of social alienation of ourselves will continue if we don’t do something about it.
“There are two paths,” Saxton said. “People will either realize what is happening to them, or they won’t. As teenagers become adults with more complex decision-making abilities, they should realize what’s happening and make the conscientious decision not to use social media anymore.
“But realistically, I think we’re going to become more isolated and instead of people recognizing that there’s a solution to this issue, they will look at the symptoms instead. More things will move online, people will interact less. We already live in an individualistic society, and it will become much more so.”
Erickson added; “We don’t even want to meet strangers anymore. We want to stay in our little boxes and never go out of them. We have to step out of our comfort zones. It’s going to be a little awkward, but it benefits society. We need to start building those little bridges between each person.”
Throughout these individual interviews with these students, one thing has become clear: we are in a crisis. We might feel the need to interact with people, but we no longer have the energy to.
“We need to focus on our interpersonal relationships,” Saxton said. “And we need to reconnect with the planet. I think it ties in heavily with our relationships. The more time you spend outdoors, the more you realize you’re not the center of the universe — which is what social media begs you to think.”
The relationships we build in our life, whether it be your family, friends, or even strangers, are the things in life that add the most value. And we’ve taken that value away, one phone, one app, one website, one game at a time.