DISCONNECTED?

We are creating and encouraging a culture of distraction

where we are increasingly disconnected from the people and events around us

and increasingly unable to engage in long-form thinking.

People now feel anxious when their brains are unstimulated.

We are losing some very important things by doing this.

We threaten the key ingredients behind creativity and insight by filling up all our “gap” time with stimulation.

And we inhibit real human connection when we prioritize our phones over the people right in front of us.

Are we losing our humanity?

In the pre-smartphone era we accessed the internet roughly five times per day, in longer chunks.

 

Today, with smartphones, we’re accessing it

27 times a day.

The effect of all of this is that we’re increasingly distracted.

Less and less able to pay attention to anything for what used to be reasonable length of times.

Numerous brain imaging studies have shown that what we call “multi-tasking” in humans, is not multi-tasking at all.

Your brain is merely trying to rapidly switch

it’s attention between two tasks.

Back and forth, as quickly as it can.

It’s shown not only that we’re dumber when we do this (an average of 10 IQ points dumber – that’s the same as pulling an all-nighter.),

but that we’re also 40% less efficient at whatever it is we’re doing.

We prefer to climb inside our devices than to live out in the world.

We screen our calls.
We send 10 texts rather than
make a one-minute phone call.

We don’t reply to emails. We cross to the other side of the street.

We stare at our phone in the elevator.

We avoid making eye contact.

We pray we’ll get their voicemail.

We hold the door-close button when we see them coming.

"Each step ‘forward’ has made it easier, just a little,

to avoid the emotional work of being present,

to convey information rather than humanity.”
~ Jonathan Safran Foer, How Not to Be Alone

R U friends 4 real?

Can "OMG—ROTFL" ("Oh my God! I'm rolling on the floor laughing!")

via text really convey the same amusement as hearing the giggles of a best friend?

                                                                                                                                   Phillip Toledano

New research suggests that we have never been lonelier (or more narcissistic)—

and that this loneliness is making us mentally and physically ill.

We meet fewer people. We gather less. And when we gather, our bonds are less meaningful and less easy.

The decrease in confidants—that is, in quality social connections—has been dramatic over the past 25 years.

In one survey, the mean size of networks of personal confidants decreased from 2.94 people in 1985 to 2.08 in 2004.

By 2004, 25 percent had nobody to talk to,

and 20 percent had only one confidant.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

ARE WE DISCONNECTED FROM
ONE ANOTHER? 

FROM OURSELVES?