Let's leave the swipe, scroll, speaker-phone society
However we got here, we need to look up from our screens.
‘We are living in the age of the parasocial relationship’ says Louise Perry in a piece for The Spectator. The illusion of intimacy via a screen, first observed by sociologists Donald Horton and Richard Wohl in the 1950s, has intensified. Today we are glued to our phones, speak to disembodied voices in the corner of the living room, and live lives as seemingly embedded in social media as they are in what we used to call the ‘real’ world of physical encounters. Surely, this can’t be good for the kids? Jonathan Haidt, psychology professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, is surely right when he says ‘you cannot grow up in networks. You have to grow up in communities’.
But one dissenting voice urges caution. Timandra Harkness writing for UnHerd, argues that any evidence of harm arising from too much screen time is surprisingly thin. While mental distress in the young became an increasing concern at around the same time as we were sucked into our virtual worlds, correlation is not causation. We should, at the very least, be careful not to misattribute our problems to apps, social media, and such like. It is also the case, she argues, that young people are living increasingly less free, and more supervised lives, than that experienced by their parents. It seems to me that with no outside to go to, and no escape from adult intervention; the online world becomes their outlet. Indeed, you might say the very thing we worry about - the dangers young people might encounter through their interactions online - they only seek out because we have spent the past decades shielding them from stranger dangers outdoors.
But again, Harkness questions the orthodox view. This is not the first time we’ve worried over the damage done by new technologies. Everything from the train to the television has been accused of undermining all that we hold dear and potentially destroying society. So we shouldn’t be too down and deterministic about our relationship with our screens. On the other hand, as she acknowledges, the melting of the boundaries between our public and private lives is a built-in feature of today’s tech. While we can’t shield our children from it anymore than we can keep them from the dangers (and joys!) of the real world - surely this reorienting of our relationships with each other is a problem?
Laurence Fox, in a perhaps uncharacteristically measured post on X, pleads with parents to ‘unplug your kids for a bit each day’. Rod Liddle, another man not known to mince his words, makes a similar point. On the one hand ‘we worry endlessly about their safety and yet are resistant to measures which might give them greater security because that would impinge on our freedoms’. A little harsh, but he has a point. Fox was referring to kids using their devices in restaurants. While those of us with children with autism or ADHD may find this is often the only way to manage a trip out - I can’t help noticing we’re not alone.
Over-anxious parents sometimes under-supervise their kids, perhaps (as Liddle says) out of too keen a regard for their own freedom, and something lacking in their sense of obligation either for those they’re responsible for or other adults they encounter. But, having said all that, parents aren’t responsible for all of society’s problems. Far from it. Our communities have changed beyond recognition. We are much more dispersed these days. Parents are, as a result, less likely to be able to rely on support from their extended families. Both parents often have to work (some from home) and many can’t afford the very considerable expense of childcare.
Is it any wonder, in these circumstances, that kids are increasingly babysat by their devices and are accessing stuff that they probably shouldn’t, with all the consequent fretting over their behaviour and wellbeing? Or that generations of young people brought up in their cocoons are wary of the wider world? According to Henry Jeffreys, author of Empire of Booze, Britain has lost a quarter of its pubs in the last quarter of a century and young people certainly aren’t going to do anything about it. They are ‘more inclined to be glued to their phones several hours a day, using social media rather than actually meeting up’.
They are not the only ones. As Ella Whelan writes, in response to a knife attack on a train in London that went viral on social media, ‘the mundanity of seemingly everyday violence should tell us something about how removed we’ve become from one another’. Shielded by our phones and earbuds, we seem oblivious to what’s going on around us. Not just that. We are actively encouraged by the authorities to disengage, to ‘film it, pretend it isn’t happening, talk about it later’. But for all that we might berate the authorities and especially the police for their inaction, this too is a cop out.
‘We need to rediscover a sense of duty to our fellow citizens’ says Whelan. ‘Adults used to be much more involved in young people’s lives’. As she argues, we might not fancy grappling with a knife-wielding maniac but we don’t need to be bystanders either. (I, for one, have long been battling with serial swipers and scrollers on public transport. There are only so many TikTok shorts and speaker phone conversations I am willing to endure.) But it is the general unwillingness to engage fellow citizens that means things are getting worse. Old and young, we are sinking into ourselves. Whether annoying others or choosing to ignore the plight of those we live amongst.
Whatever we blame this sorry state of affairs on and whatever it is doing to us as a society, many of us are tired of the swipe, scroll, speaker-phone society. If we want to leave it behind, though, we’re going to have to build something in its place. I’ll be heading to a talk about a new book, the Soul of Civility by Alexandra Hudson, this week. Hudson is founder of Civic Renaissance, a ‘newsletter and intellectual community’. So, I hope to pick up some tips on how to play a part in building a new culture of civility in the UK. This feels more important than ever. Both for our kids’ sake and our own.
Image: Web Donut