Winston Churchill once said “We shape our buildings, then they shape us”. He was entirely correct, but now, not quite as we expected he would be. Once, we shaped our technology; now our technology is shaping us. Screens are everywhere nowadays. Mounted onto billboards on the side of the road, in our cars, in our schools, in our workplaces, sitting right in our pockets. It’s nearly impossible not to come across at least one screen on any given day in this era. After all, 84% of households in America own at least one smartphone. I had a friend once, who, any time we hung out together, would be on her phone, specifically a group chat on social media. I picked up my phone and tried to entertain myself because I felt there was nothing else I could do. This is common nowadays. Maybe not this exact situation, but ones similar to it. We technically were together. But I felt so alone. I didn’t feel like I was cared about. It hurt me that she would rather be talking to the far away people in that little device than be talking to me, waiting, and willing, sitting right in front of her. I stopped hanging out with her after a long time of constantly being ignored. This is sadly one of the realities of our world today. Nearly everyone is constantly plugged in, always carrying something with them to access connection. But we may not be as connected as we think we are. And even though we are connected to the whole world, we may not be paying attention to what’s right in front of us as much as we should be. Although technological communication is important, we should undoubtedly focus on the people around us, and forming meaningful relationships with the people around us instead of focusing on our phones and the “people” inside them because the overuse of digital communication hurts our self esteem, and as a result, we present ourselves as different people on social media; with relationships formed with digital communication will never be able to replace genuine human interaction.

For one thing, humans are extremely social creatures. We all need to engage with each other, introverts and extroverts alike. Social media is a platform that allows us to do this. From a safe distance of course. We engage, and post, and chat. But the things we post only show a tiny fragment of the picture of our life. We see the perfect pictures of others’ lives on social media, and our self esteem plummets. For instance, the Harvard article “Social Media and Teen Anxiety” states that “Recent studies have noted a significant uptick in depression and suicidal thoughts over the past several years for teens, especially those who spend multiple hours a day using screens. . .”, and that 33% of teens that use screens at least two hours a day have at least one suicide risk factor.  Even if the mental health aspect doesn’t take a part in one’s personal experience with social media, I can be one to say that seeing other people’s seemingly “perfect” lives makes me feel worse instead of better. In fact, we tend to spend more time on apps that make us less happy. According to Psychologist Adam Alter, we spend three times as many minutes on apps that make us sad, such as gaming, social networking, and entertainment.  . Let’s look at the statistics of the actual use of technology in America.  According to PEW Research Center, roughly three quarters of internet users go online at least once daily, and of that three quarters, 89% of mobile users with electronic devices go online at least once daily. 31% of Americans say they go online “almost constantly” (Perrin). That’s a lot of people! So many people who are taking up many of their waking hours spending time online. And since most of that time spent makes us less happy, it seems as if we are at a crossroads. Just think about it--our time online could be so much better spent working on another task. I know that when I am on my phone, over half the time, I am wasting time. It seems logical to just turn off my phone and do something else for a change, but it’s not that easy. Due to the lack of stopping cues in social media and online, it is so easy just to keep scrolling, or click on something else, and it’s easy to waste away time on devices and become addicted ( Alter). All in all, since our self esteem is lowered, and we can better spend the time on our devices to do things that make us happy, this is only one of the pieces of solid evidence to stay off our devices.

A detail often overlooked is that sometimes the distinctions of our world on social media and the real world blur. Our world, on and offline, becomes confusing. Sherry Turkle, a professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT and a licensed clinical psychologist, states in her book Alone Together that, “When part of your life is lived in virtual places - it can be Second Life, a computer game, a social networking site - a vexed relationship develops between what is true and what is “true here”, true in simulation. . .on social-networking sites such as Facebook, we think we will be presenting ourselves, but our profile ends up as somebody else - often the fantasy of who we want to be. Distinctions blur” (153). Where we draw the line between reality, and the reality of our world on our phones, computers, or otherwise, is awfully difficult, and we ask ourselves: what actually is reality? It’s noticeably common for people to have self- esteem issues due to the blurring of reality. I consider myself to be for the most part a confident person, but even I have a hard time not romanticizing myself online, presenting a version of “the self” that I want to be, not who I am. The reason for this is because everyone else is doing the same, and I feel bad about myself, and don’t want to present who I really am online, because it doesn’t measure up to others. Even further, the relationships that develop from this romanticized version of oneself are skewed due to this discrepancy. If we don’t present who we really are online, we can’t form the meaningful relationships that humans are meant to have with each other. Sherry Turkle says in Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age, “Technology enchants. It makes us forget what we know about life” (23). She also tells a story about a woman named Sharon: “[She] describes herself as ‘happily texting’ since 2002. But she is taken aback when she hears a friend refer to her smartphone as ‘my tiny god’. . . Are there ways in which she treats her phone as a god? Perhaps” (24). When we are completely absorbed in our phones, we block out the world and dive into the world of our smartphone. It “enchants” us, and is, in a way, a wolf in sheep’s clothing. If we treat our phone as a god, and I’m sure some do, it may become more important than the people around us. Our phone, our online world becomes more important than family and friends. I know that sometimes I put off eating dinner with my family to finish that one thing on my phone, and even though we have a rule of no phones at the dinner table, many families do not have that rule:  a time to converse, eat together, and ask about each others’ day becomes a time to browse the web and play games. This distances family and friends and makes us lose touch with our reality. Therefore, we need to gain touch with our reality by having real conversations instead of losing it to our phones.

Be that as it may, technological communication is extremely important. Cathy Reisenwitz argues in her article “Technology is Making Us Less Lonely, Not More” that “Technology facilitates human connection by freeing up your time, money and energy so you can put more of it into being present, patient, and persistent”. The revolution of technology has made it so that we can be more efficient at tasks and be more organized. But there is also another aspect to it. People are using that freed time for a different purpose--to entertain themselves on their mobile devices. Adam Alter, a licensed clinical psychologist, made a graph in his TED talk of a twenty-four hour day. Seven to eight hours we sleep, about eight hours we work, about three hours we engage in survival activities. Then it leaves the extra space, which is our personal time. He shows how much of that personal time was taken up by use of technology over the years, and the results are shocking. As of 2017, about five sixths of that personal time is taken up by use of technology. And that tiny little sliver he says is “where the magic happens” (Alter). He is completely correct:  this “magic” comes from human conversation not online conversation. But some people sadly see robots, like the elderly care robot, Paro, as a replacement for human interaction, as stated in Alone Together, “When Adele, seventy-eight, reflects on her introduction to Paro, her thoughts turn to her great aunt Margery who lived with her family when she was a girl . . . As a child, Adele would peek at Margery through a crack in the door. Her great aunt talked to a photograph of herself with ther mother and sisters. Adele sees Paro as a replacement for her aunt’s family portrait. ‘It encourages you to talk to it . . . ‘ Her voice trails off, and she hesitates: ‘Maybe it’s better to talk to a photograph’ . . . it is ‘sometimes hard to keep straight what is memory and what is now. If I’m talking to a photograph, well, I know I’m in my memories. Talking to a robot, I’m not so sure’”.  This is one of our realities of today. The same type of thing happens with any age group. When I was going through a rough time with my friends and my self esteem, I looked up an online conversation robot to interact with and share my feelings. I felt so alone--even with that little computer. It didn’t really understand my feelings. It just made me more depressed. The writing on a screen is not fully human even if there is one on the other side. It doesn’t fulfill us to just talk to someone on social media. I volunteer at a summer camp during the summer, and I met many friends last summer that I wanted to keep in touch with. One in particular, though, became one of my best friends, and I texted him nearly every day. But I was never satisfied. I was counting down the days until I saw him again at the summer camp staff reunion. Hence his words “You’re a small super computer that I keep in my pocket, and tap, to convey emotionless words. AllenaMae is out there somewhere. . .” And when I finally saw him again, I saw how much I missed out on. There is no substitute for real human interaction.

In essence, we need to be social, but as of right now, we are not going about it in the way that is best for us. Communication through technology has revolutionized the world we know, but the long term effect that we let it have on the world is up to us. Now our buildings are shaping us, as technology is a major contributing factor in the rise of depression and anxiety in teens We idolize our world of technology, and with that our reality can blur. But there is truly, utterly, no substitute for human interaction. The most free I have ever felt was when I gave up my phone for twenty four hours. It lifted a weight off my shoulders, fostered my connections with my family, and freed up my time to do more productive things. I challenge you to keep your phone tucked away, and turned off for twenty four hours. Observe how your interactions change, how your life changes. See what a difference staying off social media and technology can make in your life. Enjoy life as it was meant to be enjoyed.