Lost in connectivity: the price of being on all the time
Although hyperconnectivity is our technological fate in these times, we must learn to recognize the cultural price we pay for being constantly connected.
This is not to demonize smartphones, which have already become social prosthetics, but to reflect on the valuable things that we are missing while we use them.
The glance
Mobile devices have hijacked our eyes. The smartphone’s screen catches our sight and concentrates our attention, away from the surrounding world and from others.
We look through the viewfinder to photograph a reality that we have not learned to observe, and we look at ourselves using the mobile as a mirror for an endless selfie.
Distance
Social networks have put us a click away from everyone, and that, in general, is too close for us to maintain a bit of privacy.
Without distance there is no respect, there is no mystery, there is no personal space. All life shared in the networks becomes territory without barriers for bystanders, stalkers, and eavesdroppers.
Time
Cell phones have done away with the dead times, the slow time and the hours together. The waits and pauses have become times of connection and have been lost as times to contemplate, to think or to create.
The hours together, essential for any valuable work, are pulverized by insubstantial notifications or recurring queries.
Silence
Permanent connectivity conspires against silence. We are constantly tempted with music, notifications, alerts, calls, videos or voice messages ready to banish any hint of silence that remains throughout the day.
There are already many people who can not work, run or walk without listening to music or podcasts. The omnipresent white headphones are the emblem of hyperconnectivity.
Loneliness
Having all our friends a click away is too great a temptation to give up. Social networks exploit our ancestral fear of loneliness and make us increasingly unable to be alone.
We have turned cell phones into a form of anesthesia for loneliness.
Thought
Interacting with other users in social networks through mobile devices tends to turn communication into an exercise that privileges the speed of reaction over the depth of reflection.
The use of emoticons, the ease of likes and the options for forwarding messages, help the viralization of contents boosted by impulses, emotions and instant opinions.
Knowledge
In this context, it is no coincidence that post-truth has become the word of the year 2016, or that Time magazine has dedicated a cover to ask if the truth was dead (Is Truth Dead?) in 2017.
The permanent exposure to a timeline that amplifies the prejudices of the user, and whose contents are valued as headlines with a hook, leaves an ever smaller margin for understanding reality and knowing how to account for it.
Conversation
Although “conversation” was the great metaphor of Internet interaction since the Cluetrain Manifesto was published in 1999, the truth is that social networks have become spaces in which it is increasingly difficult to articulate quality conversations.
On the other hand, in the physical world, the interruptions generated by mobile devices end up turning any conversation into a battle to maintain the attention of our interlocutors.
Self-esteem
We have become addicted to the need for recognition of others.
Hyperconnectivity not only facilitates exposing our life in real-time but also converts the “likes” of our reference communities into the new measure of happiness.
The intrinsic satisfaction that many activities and achievements should bring is now measured by the amount of support they have obtained in the social networks.
The future
Faced with the totalization of the present in the empire of real-time we run the risk of losing the ability to design our future, which is the time of the project, the promise, and confidence.
We have become impatient.
What matters now, as the title of Gary Hamel’s bestseller reads, cannot be the only thing that matters.
Without disregarding the advantages of connectivity that has become irreversible, we should propose the exercise of periodic voluntary disconnections to recover something that hyperconnectivity is taking ahead.
We have to disconnect more to connect better.
Jose Luis Orihuela is a professor, speaker and author, born in Argentina and living in Spain. He is a faculty member of the School of Communication, University of Navarra (Pamplona). Visiting scholar and speaker in 26 countries. Writer and blogger focused on the impact of the internet on media, communication and culture. His latest books are: Manual breve de Mastodon (2023), Culturas digitales (2021), Los medios después de internet (2015), Mundo Twitter (2011), 80 claves sobre el futuro del periodismo (2011) and La revolución de los blogs (2006). Publishing in eCuaderno since 2002 (ecuaderno.com), in Twitter since 2007 (@jlori) and in Mastodon since 2022 (mastodon.social/@jlori).
