The Evolution of Human Interaction via Electronic Communication

During my junior year of high school, I had to write an essay about how technology was adversely impacting our society based on a reading assignment provided.  It was an in-class assignment for English 11 that I completely bombed.  I'd never minded spur of the moment writing assignments in high school.  I've always loved flooding paper with my thoughts and opinions, but in 1999, this was a difficult assignment for me to comprehend.  Now, in 2013, this would have been a simple essay. The way people interact with each other today has drastically changed since even I was in high school.  That really wasn't all that long ago.

Cell phones. iPads. Kindels. Blackberrys. iPhones. Facebook. Twitter. Texting. When I was in high school, when someone said "cell phone" you'd typically think of a cool portable phone. Generally speaking, only wealthy people owned them.  Cell phones were large with big antennas. So large, people carried them in bags.  They were cool... but you looked like kind of a dork while using them...

 Texting? That wasn't even a word.

I have a Verizon flip phone.  It's five years old, and doesn't even have a camera.  I only pay about 50 dollars a month for use.  I can slip it in my pocket, and people can pretty much reach me any time.  I hate texting.  In the time it takes people to text me something of a complex nature, it could have been communicated verbally in less than half that time. 

That notwithstanding, I still do think smartphones are kind of cool.  You can play games, access the internet, go on Facebook, Tweet your thoughts and communicate with the world in so many awesome ways.  Hell, you can even meet new people on your phone while sitting alone in your office at work!  Yeah, definitely cool.  But at what expense?

This form of communication is replacing the most important kind of human interaction- People talking to each other vis-a-vis and being fully aware of the importance of life as it exists around them.  Human beings have become walking zombies, not paying attention to both the beauty and the suffering of the world as they pay more attention to the smartphones out in front of them.  How many people do you see walking with their heads up on a busy street, smiling and making eye contact with others?  Shouldn't that be the norm?  

In my experience, I've found if you so much as dare say "good morning" to an individual with their phone out in front of them, it's considered rude.  How dare you intrude upon the personal affairs that are literally going on in the palm of another's hand?  Portable electronic communication is now seemingly far more important than human contact.  It's sad, really.  It's like, "Hi, I'm here. Can you maybe put your phone away so we can sit and have a conversation together? Or is the phone on the table more important than the fact that I'm here with you now?"  Really, this kind of thing happens to me.  I don't think I'm being rude or unreasonable in asking this of anyone.  I'm being realistic.

Smartphones also take away from being aware of your surroundings.  Paying attention to what's going on around you is important to being human.  I feel like people need to walk with their heads upright a little more and just see the world as around them.  Imagine the difference you could make in a person's life who might be hurting inside and expressing that through tears rolling down their cheeks?  I know from experience that a simple, "Are you okay?" from a complete stranger can mean so much.  A hug from a friend who sees pain in your eyes without your even having to say a word is just so special.  Now, you could bypass a friend in pain, or maybe someone who just needs a hug because you're too busy checking out what's going on with the rest of the world on Twitter.  Twitter doesn't make us human, acting human does.  Interpret that as you will. 

With all of that being said, I still love how small the wold has become with social networking.  I've been privileged to connect with so many awesome people through my blog, my old (and new) Facebook accounts, and Twitter.  If I'm important enough to connect with someone online, especially in a dystonia community, we'll meet.  If I'm not, then so be it.  But when I'm with you, please put your Smartphone away.

Last Friday I had the privilege of accompanying a new friend I met via my blog to Frontier Field in Rochester in order to promote a fundraising event - Toss for Dystonia.  If it weren't for Facebook, Blogger, and Dystonia BloggerMania, we probably would have crossed paths at social functions through work for years and never have had said a word to each other.  It ended up being that the world was just really small and dystonia was a commonality in our lives.  What I noticed at Frontier Field as I tried to help advertise, was something a bit awkward to me... people paying absolutely no attention to anything around them... heads down... with their smartphones in front of them.  How do you approach someone like that with information about a fundraising event?  It's like... you can't.  I couldn't.  I didn't.  We met all kinds of people, but for me, personally... these smartphone folks were the most unapproachable.

I'm not anti-technology. I can't forget how important Facebook was just a few years ago, when my now husband found me. I had not seen him since high school.  Despite the fact that we lived less than a mile from each other at the time, we had not seen each other in over ten years.  Thanks to Facebook, we were able to reconnect and become close friends, and eventually husband and wife.  After that, I'm not sure how useful I found Facebook. Other than for dystonia support, I didn't really use it. That's why I have only 28 friends on my new Facebook account.  I want to live a life apart from it.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that there should be a balance between technological communication and actually acting like a real human.  What that balance is, I'm not really sure... but I do know what it's not.