"Fifteen years ago, the internet was an escape from the real world. Now, the real world is an escape from the internet."
The quote is attributed to Noah Smith, a professor of finance. What Smith is essentially saying is that we seem to "live" digitally now more than we do the traditional way. It makes perfect sense.
If you're like me, you probably communicate more with friends and family via email, text, WhatsApp, or social media than you do in person. You're likely shopping more online than you do at brick-and-mortar stores. And you're probably watching movies more frequently through services like Netflix than at the movie theater.
While there's no question the convenience the internet affords us has made our lives easier in myriad ways, it's also made human interaction much more impersonal.
If you'd asked me in the 90s whether relatives and friends would someday wish one another Happy Birthday by text message rather than over the phone, I probably wouldn't have believed it. But that's just par for the course in the digital age we live in.
We've become so overly reliant on the internet for almost everything we do that face-to-face interactions have largely taken a back seat. In the late 90s/early 2000s, chatrooms and instant messages were viewed as things people turned to for fun. It was all novel, and no one really expected that virtual communication could ever supplant the real deal.
Fast forward to the present. Thanks to the proliferation of smartphones, tablets, and other devices, you can have a conversation with anyone on the go, at the push of a button. You can exchange pictures, videos, and even have video conversations in real time thanks to products like FaceTime.
I am of the belief that chatting online is no substitute for in-person exchanges with the people you truly care about. Sometimes you want to be able to see, touch, and interact with the individual the conventional way. While digital talk saves us a great deal of time and effort, it also removes that human element that's so vital to social relationships.
It goes without saying we should make an effort to meet up with these individuals at least once in a while. It keeps the relationship fresh and prevents both parties from feeling, for lack of a better word, robotic.
The biggest irony with digital communication is that it can simultaneously make people feel in touch and out of touch.
Doesn't it make you wonder what the future holds as far as communication?
Comments