Digital media have wrecked our sense of time. We scroll and scroll for the next dopamine hit. We can barely pay attention enough to read a book in silence. Even in movie theaters, people are surreptitiously looking at their phones. Here we have a high-dopamine, massive screen in front of us and that is not even enough: People have to sneak a look.
Once you see this going on, you cannot unsee it. Drivers are constantly distracted despite the obvious danger of driving. People are walking all over the city while scrolling their phones, and they do it with earbuds and headphones playing podcasts and music. Couples sit at restaurants holding their magic boxes in their hands, staring at stupid things.
Have you had an uninterrupted conversation lately in a group? I haven’t. There is always someone who is prompted by some topic to pull out the phone and start yammering about something that is on the internet. It’s the uninvited guest to every party. (By the way, every private club of which I know bans cellphones in dining halls and salons; shouldn’t we do the same in our homes during social times?)
This habit keeps shortening attention spans. They keep getting shorter. It seems like it is down to seconds these days. As a consequence, anything that takes time and single-minded focus seems like a terrible burden and an occasion for deep regret. Can’t paint. Can’t read. Can’t practice music. Can’t have a conversation. Can’t listen to another actual physical person talking. Can’t think.
People have lost curiosity about what others say. After all, there is a machine in my pocket that knows more. Why not neglect what is in front of me in favor of the machine I carry around, never mind the insult to everyone else? Grabbing your phone to look something up as someone is talking is a way of saying, “You don’t matter as much as this digital thing I carry around.”
Pulling out a phone during a conversation is just plain rude unless you explain why it is absolutely essential. Even then, there is a downside: It signals that those around you are just not as important as Mark Zuckerberg or whatever.
This results in a process of gradual dehumanization of everyone around us. It is disparaging of friends and family. You have surely had the experience of speaking on the phone to someone and hearing keys click in the background. Then you notice a slight delay in the conversation. It’s because they are looking at something else. You guess that you just aren’t very interesting.
Not only is this unbearably rude, but it is also warping the human spirit. It is blunting awareness, crushing our capacity for noticing or caring about others, throttling the development of rich friendships and communities, and decaying our hearts and souls. It is rotten and even evil.
How did it come to this? In the beginning, social media and smartphones seemed fun and progressive, even liberating. We threw ourselves in, thrilled with the capacity to be in touch with friends and family in a way that was never before possible. This was the invitation and we took the bait.
But things got worse quickly. Suddenly more and more people were not where they were. They were somewhere else, looking at stupid things on the internet. Companies figured it out. They began to be voracious for our time and attention and retooled to grab as much of it as possible without limit.
We joined more groups, believed all the nonsense about how we are “on a roll” and need to keep the engagement high. We were enticed to believe that we were achieving something instead of destroying something. What was being destroyed? At minimum, our attention spans. But probably more. It’s not hyperbole to say that it is destroying our lives and the very fabric of civilization itself.
Why say something so extreme? Here’s why. Society consists of people with feelings, ideas, motivations, and aspirations. If we are socialized and digitally acculturated to neglect them and ourselves, then we are participating in the shredding of the social fabric.
Despite “the cloud” and apps, we do live in a physical world: There is food to grow and raise, there are houses to build and maintain, there is clothing to keep clean, and so on. If all this becomes nothing but an annoyance to regret, we begin to turn sour on the normal flow of life itself. Our priorities get turned upside down, putting a tsunami of flimflammery over actual obligations and disciplines.
We become stupid, unsettled, and perpetually impatient.
I’m now going to stop with my kvetching about what digital everything has done to us and offer a solution. We all need to establish a new goal for ourselves. We should test whether and to what extent we have patience for anything. Can we pay attention in a conversation for 15 minutes, 30 minutes, or even an hour? Can we be alone without ceaseless stimulation and just look inside ourselves, our hearts and minds?
You can test this anytime or anywhere. My guess is that most people today will fail at this, which is gravely tragic. If you find that you fail, that you too have been caught up in the grim habits of dopamine addiction and the need for unrelenting information flows, what can you do about it?
In your neighborhood or community, there is a place to walk. Pick a route that is a mile or two for starters. This will take you 45 minutes or so at a leisurely pace. Put on your walking shoes and head out. Leave your cellphone behind. If you have kids or someone with whom you must be in contact, take it but plan to not look at it.
Then start walking. Look at the neighborhood, the trees, the grass, and the flowers. Notice other people. See what they are wearing. Listen to conversations that people who pass you are having. Notice the strollers, the dogs, the shoes, the hats. Look at the streets, the stones, the houses, the walls, the shutters on windows, the colors of paints. See the sky and look at the clouds. Take in the sun and store up some vitamin D for the winter months.
Work up a sweat. Then head home. I promise you: You will feel refreshed and alive. But if you are a typical person these days, you will be shocked at how different it feels. You were actually offline for an hour and did not die. You actually enjoyed yourself. You managed to pay attention to the physical world for a full hour without interruption.
That alone is a great achievement these days. You can revel in it. Consider yourself a champion, an outlier who has bucked the trend of dehumanization. Next time, call a friend and ask him to join you. Then others. You might eventually get a whole group of friends who are dedicated to cultivating an offline life.
Then you can extend it to three miles or five miles. Maybe it takes two hours. You get exercise and sun and wonderful sights and sounds of physical-world happenings. But crucially, you begin to repair your capacity for paying attention to a thing for longer than three seconds. This is essential for your capacity to think and judge.
As you get better at this, you can consider other tasks. You can clean the house, do a puzzle, work a crossword, or even read a book. Maybe you go a full morning, afternoon, or evening without Mr. Internet. Maybe you hold a dinner party and subtly hint that it would be a more rewarding experience if we just put our phones away for the evening. Maybe eventually you can even read a large classic book.
Once you set your mind to it, you can make progress in getting your life back. You will find that there is a role for digital communication and media. However, they are not the whole of life, nor should they compete with human interaction. The more you are attached to the digital world as your sole source of information, entertainment, and even psychological support, the more miserable you will be.
A major reason for this is the gutting of something our parents have been training us to do since we were infants: have patience. Our misnamed smartphones have literally infantilized us, like kids who cannot sit through a church service. We are all in the position these days of rebuilding the maturity and long-term thinking that are essential for a life well-lived.
