What is it with these school shootings? Why do we still see so much pain and suffering among our young people? Or people in general? What is the real cost of a society that is disconnecting from one another? I do not claim to be an authority on these matters, but I do have some professional observations about the landscape within which these events keep occurring.
So you may have noticed it’s been a while since I last posted. Sometimes time is needed to calm the soul a little. I had been living in the eternal winter of Minnesota and abruptly Spring sprung and Summer is here, and my soul has been singing once again. Sometimes even psychologists need to take some self-care time away from projects and responsibilities, so I took it. Now I am ready and raring to go.
I recently took a trip to Seattle and was able to take a ton of awesome pictures. The cover photo was one of those and I just love it, because it so closely paralleled a blog topic I have been mulling around in my head about connection and disconnection. Of course, right? A shadow drawing on the sidewalk of a person on their mobile phone. “Of course that is about connection and disconnection, Doc…uh…err…Huh????”
“Doc you’re a psychologist, so of course you’re going to tell us phones are bad, right?” Nope. That’s not true. It’s missing the point when we make global statements like phones are bad. It’s not about the phones…it’s about us. We are disconnecting more and more. I see this in the despair of our nation that seems to be spiraling out of control with violence and apathy. My opinion…school shootings are not about guns any more than death by domestic violence is about anger management issues. It runs much deeper than that. It runs so deep that we have stopped being aware of where it is coming from and we are fighting about the wrong end of the problem. This despair is a symptom of our disconnection…to each other and to ourselves. “Whoa Doc!!! Them’s fightin’ words! You better be able to back this up.”
Okay, so let me start with our perceived connection. I am not an old woman by any stretch of the imagination, but I am part of a generation that had phones connected to wires, connected to walls. I remember my Dad being so mad at all of us stretching that cord into our bedrooms to the point of nearly ripping those cords out of the wall. I also remember fighting for who got to be on the phone in a household of siblings. And I remember my siblings trying to pick up one of the other lines in the house and listen in. Man that was a way to start a drop down, drag out fight. Yet, it was the way of our world back then. Nowadays, my children think of such things as items you will see in the history museum (not going to lie, while humorous that is also quite irritating that they think this). “So, what does this have to do with connection and disconnection, Doc?” Well what do you think we did when we were waiting for the phone, or it wasn’t our turn for the phone, or our Dad was mad that we nearly ripped the cord out again? Well…we went out and saw our friends in person instead. Too much work to fight for the phone.
Today we basically have entire computers/cameras/telecommunication devices in our pockets (well lets be real…they are in our hands). Plus there is the internet. What a revolution that is. We are now so connected with technological advances, how is it ever possible to be disconnected? Ah, my friends and therein lies the issue. In a world of virtual connection, we lack more and more in actual connection.
“Alright Doc…that’s nothing new. Everyone knows that.” Do they? Really? I beg to differ. Here is the thing, I know that we have talked about how words have meaning in an earlier blog, however words don’t have all the meaning. When you are talking to someone face to face there are so many other ways that we communicate. For example, in my house we joke that mocking is our language of love. In other words, we all speak fluent sarcasm and there are some dead pan faces that deliver these lines. True comedians my friends. If I didn’t see those faces and know the tone and intonation, read the body language, and ultimately feel my loving attachment to these people anytime we are in the same room together…well folks…I would think that they all hated me…a lot…like a lot, a lot. Can’t deliver these conversations in a text or an email. Can’t create the laughter in these statements even by phone. No, these are truly communications that must happen in person.
And then there is the type of communication that facilitates connection, using no words at all. Like the touch of a loving hand, a pat on the back, a hug, or a kiss. What about the words unarticulated, yet very much said in every one of those interactions? Those won’t happen through technology at all. Even the best of emoji’s won’t express these enough. Now clearly we make efforts with things like emoji’s, LOLs, or GIFs, yet it just isn’t the same. I can type out all the actions that go into embracing someone in a hug, but the words I put on the page won’t even scratch the surface of the feeling you get when someone hugs us. What a message that can be. It won’t ever be able to translate into words, much less delivered through technology.
So what we are left with is the false sense that we are connecting, when actually we are connecting much less than when we just went outside and played with our friends, took a walk with our heads up saying hello to passersby instead of reading the text that just buzzed across our phone. It’s actually an illusion of connection. And of course there are also the illusions of perfection that we peddle to one another. Our Instagram lives that point out only when things are great (or at least make it look like they’re great).
And then there is the real culprit of disconnection in a technologically integrated society. What’s that you ask? Anonymity. This one is a real silent killer and its motis operandi is to kill us slowly. Death by Tweets. Am I right? We can be politically fundamentalist and engage in battles of whit and will that far exceed anything we would have the guts to do in person. And for kids it can be much worse. In a time when their brains are just developing, when they are still impulsive, not great at thinking things through, and without any hindsight to have learned from, our kids can be even more hateful to one another. And this is the kind of environment we have been in as school shootings have escalated in frequency and intensity.
Do you know how many people I see that have social anxiety? I see adults and children and I see far more folks in all age groups that have social anxiety than I do kids with ADHD. We thought that was epidemic and over-medicated…guess what is happening with this anxiety epidemic? Lots of scripts and very little teaching of how to be in public, how to have a conversation, or how to be with other people in general. And what do you think will happen once the generations who have been raised in technology and have less in-person interaction start teaching their kids how to interact? What will that look like? It’s worth thinking about.
So you see, this is why my feeling is that there is more disconnection than connection these days. I don’t think phones are bad. They are plastic, glass, and wires. They have no inherent goodness or badness. It is the user that determines the value. So I challenge you to start thinking about how you are using these devices, or even how much. In an earlier blog I referenced a way to do look at how to manage your time to be more in alignment with your values. Mostly though, I challenge you to look up at the world, not down on your phone. I challenge you to look people in the eye as you’re walking by them. I challenge you to smile at someone, instead of sending a text. I encourage you to pay more attention to the messages you receive that don’t have words and to give those same unsaid messages to others. Connect with people in real time, with real actions and real communication. See what happens. You may surprise yourself and like it more than you think.