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Log #1: The Internet and Your Brain 

In the 2008 Atlantic article Is Google Making Us Stupid?, Nicolas Carr insists that the way his brain functions has been compromised due to the internet and the changing shape of media. He claims that over the past few years he has had the unsettling sense that someone, or something, has been meddling with the way he thinks. 

Like Carr, I have also experienced the feeling that the way I think, specifically when it comes to processing information, has been affected due to an external being of some kind. In the fall of 2018, as Grade 11 began, I started to have an immense difficulty focusing and completing my work on time. Though I managed to maintain my grades, I was exhausted with the amount of effort it took to stay on task. In the spring I was tested by a specialist and diagnosed with ADHD, which led to a low-dose prescription of Ritalin. Though the test results were laid out in front of me, I couldn’t help but wonder if I really had ADHD. I observed that many of my peers who had not been diagnosed with ADHD appeared to have just as much or even more trouble focusing than myself. Was technology finally starting to take a toll on my brain or was I born this way? 

I continue to question the authenticity and cause of this so-called attention deficit disorder, and wonder if it all boils down to the age of the internet. Bruce Friedman, a long standing faculty member at the University of Michigan Medical School, describes his thinking as though it has taken on a “staccato” effect. What Friedman is describing is the lost ability to deeply understand and process texts that are more than a couple paragraphs in length. I too, have an embarrassingly difficult time reading more than a paragraph without taking a break. More often than not, I skim through pieces of texts and find that I’ve barely understood what I have just finished reading. This “staccato” effect, as Friedman put it, is having a huge impact on my ability to learn and make insightful connections. 

To put it simply, yes, I feel certain that the internet is making us stupider. Of course, to say something like that is to deny the fact that the internet gives us access to more information than ever before. The internet inherently puts quantity over quality, and it is up to us to decide if we’re comfortable with it. 

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/306868/

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Log #5: Free Choice: Death to the Idle

One definition of idle is as follows, to spend time doing nothing. Though this may be a synonym for words like lazy or frivolous, I have been persuaded to believe that idling should be held at a greater value than it currently holds. In a world where nobody is ever doing nothing, we are more anxious, depressed, and distracted than any of our ancestors were.

A few months ago I was introduced to a book titled How to be Idle, written by Tom Hodgkinson, a British writer and editor of The Idler magazine. It was recommended to me by my dad who, for the most part, lives his life opposite to mine: he stays in while I like to go out, he sits still while I fidget. To be completely honest I don’t remember the context the book was handed to me in, but I had a few hours to kill and I read it. The book is written in 24 chapters (one for each hour) and is a sort of manifesto for doing nothing, with chapter titles such as “Toil and Trouble” and “Skiving for Pleasure and Profit.” Hodgkinson critiques liberal consumer capitalism and the idea that to lead a meaningful life, we must work to live and live to work. As somebody who longs for constant stimulation, I was profoundly intrigued by the idea that one could do nothing and be content.

Despite the book being published in 2004, before the rise of social media and smartphones, it so relevantly ties into our struggles with technology today. Aside from monks and meditators, most of us go about our days only partially-present, leaving little time for cooking, engaging in deep conversation, and really thinking. The truth of the matter is that we don’t need to be present when we have a constant escape at arm’s-reach, ready to pull us into another world whenever we feel bored, tired, or uncomfortable. I think many of us aren’t even able to look deeply inside ourselves, at least in the way that past generations have been able to, because, unlike them, we always have an external thing to turn to. Why would you sit still and think for hours when you could scroll through an endless stream of bright colours and familiar faces? Why would you choose to listen to loud streetcars when you could drown it out with your favourite song? Not only why would you, but how can you? How can you sit still long enough to have deep insights while your phone urgently vibrates next to you? How can you choose to think about the meaning of life when you’ve practically been programmed to escape those thoughts of that nature?

It appears that present-day life is made up of a series of short-lived activities, all possessing specific time limits that leave us unsatisfied. It also seems that the reason so few of us act on our concerns surrounding technology is because our world has been constructed to prevent us from being able to do just that. It is a cycle of distress and distraction, and we all fall right in the middle of it, as we make desperate attempts to succeed before we have even understood what success really means.

If we don’t slow down, we will crash and burn. Technology has set fire to primitive ways and replaced them with disjointed, fragmented patterns of thought and living. Every time we pick up a screen, we must be aware of the lens we are looking through, as it is innately constructing our views.

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Log #4: China’s Selfie Obsession

What was once exclusively employed for commercial use has now become readily available to everyone, everywhere, and even endorsed by China’s social media trends. The changing shape of photoshop has given the most populous country in the world a new standard of beauty. Jiayang Fan, a writer at New York Times, describes this as a “selfie obsession,” and points a finger at Meitu, a highly successful Chinese app developer, to blame.

Meipai, a Chinese video-sharing platform launched in 2014, appears to have similarities to Western apps such as Vine or more recently, TikTok. Featuring short videos of comedy, makeup, dancing, and more, Meipai has made HoneyCC, a 27 year old ex-dancer, a millionaire. The parent company of Meipai, Meitu, has developed several apps under names such as BeautyPlus, BeautyCam and Selfie City, all of which are used to digitally smooth skin and brighten features. When being interviewed, HoneyCC told Fan that it is considered “solecism” to share a photo of yourself that hasn’t been edited. She goes on to say that “selfies are a part of Chinese culture now, and so is Meitu-editing selfies.”

Based on Fan’s article and her interview with HoneyCC, it seems nearly necessary to use a selfie-editing app as a media user in China. But with the company motto, “to make the world a more beautiful place,” it’s difficult not to question Meitu’s intentions and the potential consequences these apps may have on their users. The level of construction is undeniably more obvious among this particular selfie trend, but does that mean it’s any worse than what most of us construct on our own social media pages everyday? I think it’s quite easy to point a finger at someone using photoshop and say “Look! I’ve figured it out! This is a construction! She doesn’t actually look like that! ” It takes much more insight to reflect on the subtler constructions that happen all the time, such as the adorable photos of you and your siblings from when you were little.

The photo above is a version of me and my siblings where we appear to be the closest, cutest, most-well behaved trio ever. The truth is that behind the scenes of this adorable photo is a professional photographer and about 100 outtakes. So who’s to say that HoneyCC’s photo is any more of a construction than this photo of my family? In HoneyCC’s photo she changed her face, and in mine we complained in Riverdale park for hours until a photo came out clear.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/18/chinas-selfie-obsession

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Log #3: Social Lives Online

Social media may be the most ironic invention to date. Created with the intention of providing constant connection, and the feeling of you are never alone, social media apps have a hilarious way of doing the exact opposite. The rise of FOMO (the fear of missing out), a phrase coined by a marketing strategist in 2000, has overloaded an already lonely, insecure, and desperate generation of teens and pre-teens. 

According to Real Girls, Real Pressure: A National Report on the State of Self-Esteem, seven in ten girls believe they are not good enough, or do not measure up in some way. Similarly, the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health found that teenage boys face the same worries about not being good enough, whether that be physical or social insecurities.  

It is fairly common knowledge that one’s teen years are more lonely and filled with insecurity than any other time of life, but what does this mean when a physical app comes into play, publicly broadcasting every individual’s social standing in relation to one another? Social media serves as a 24 hour filtered surveillance of who’s doing what and who isn’t, and for an age group that is notoriously self-conscious this can be incredibly detrimental to one’s health. According to CAMH, FOMO is typically experienced by overly active social media users, and has been linked to lower mood levels and less satisfaction with one's life. These feelings are often linked to depression and anxiety and have the potential to contribute to suicidal thoughts.

Social media is set up in a way that exclusively allows you to show your followers what you want them to see and filter out what you don’t. For a viewer, this means you are never seeing the thing itself, but rather, a constructed version of the thing. A perfect example of this is a recent house party I attended where the lights were on and the people were scarce. Shortly after arriving I called an Uber and quits on the party. In the backseat I opened up Instagram to find not one, but  six “stories” from the party I had just left. One by one I scrolled through the videos, each one depicting something new and outrageous. By the sixth video I found myself questioning my impulse to leave and wondering, had I betrayed my body and stayed, would the party have gotten better? The construction of the actual party, in the form of quick clips and photos, made this party look desirable, making me feel like I had to be there. But the truth was, I didn’t. The anxiety I was experiencing about leaving behind this mediocre evening was a direct result of FOMO, programming me to believe the party was truly as fun as it appeared online. 

https://heartofleadership.org/statistics/

https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/uk/17/12/social-media-and-teen-anxiety

https://www.camh.ca/en/camh-news-and-stories/no-mo-fomo

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Log #2: Has the Smartphone Destroyed a Generation?

In Jean Twenge’s article, Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation, she describes “iGen,” the smartphone-obsessed generation born between the years of 1995 and 2012. Although generations before have grown up with advanced technologies such as the web or television, those born into iGen are the first generation to never know a world without these technologies. Twenge says that the arrival of the smartphone has “radically changed” every aspect of teenager’s lives, from the very nature of their socialization skills to their mental health. 

To showcase the contrast between generations, Twenge references a Bill Yates photography series from the early 1970’s, capturing the edge, confidence, and independence of Boomer adolescence. There is one photo in particular, as shown above, of a shirtless teenager with a hefty bottle of Peppermint Schnapps tucked into his waistband. This teen radiates confidence, effortlessness, and...intoxication. The 70’s were a time to rebel against your parents to be your true self, and the rink was just the place to do it. This “allure of independence”, as Twenge describes it, that was so highly pervasive in past generations, seems to have lost its power since GenX. So, what does it mean when teens start tucking smartphones into their waistbands instead of Schnapps? According to Twenge this means a generation of physically safer, but more mentally distressed kids and teens. She found that 12th graders in 2015 were going out less than eight graders did in 2009. She also found that only about 56 percent of high school students are going on dates, whereas for Boomers and GenXers that number was closer to 85 percent. This dating decline also transfers into a decline in sexual activity, which has been cut by almost 40 percent since 1991. All of this alludes to say that teens are healthier, right? Well, not exactly. While they aren’t getting wasted at the roller rink, they are replacing these hours of freedom with hours staring at a screen, alone. The Monitoring the Future survey, funded by the NIDA, found that teens who spend more time than average participating in screen activities are more likely to be unhappy, without exception. 

To conclude, I am eager to agree with Twenge and say that iGen has indeed been destroyed by the smartphone. I am also willing to argue that there are ways to mitigate these effects by remaining particularly alert to the impacts of our smartphones. Technology is a powerful force, but I believe our will to be happy holds an even greater power. 

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-the-smartphone-destroyed-a-generation/534198/