Digital Obesity

Last time, we considered the experience of burnout many activists are feeling in our communities, mostly as a result of social media attacks and heated exchanges.  The number of responses I received confirming this phenomenon should press us to explore the subject a bit further.

Fifteen years ago, hardly any of us were feeling so insecure about our involvement.  The Internet was present and social media apps were making an appearance, but dialogue among those caring about where they lived was largely personal in nature.  As Robin Dunbar, of the “social brain” theory put it back in the 90s, human beings hung out in groups averaging 150 people for the majority of their history.  They were tribal and followed rigid customs, but the point is that there were “social” animals and personal contact is what it was all about.  Negotiating such settings required some skill. People had to refine their conduct to remain effective in the group.

But as language expanded so did the size of the communities – eventually resulting in large towns and cities. Shared language allowed information to leap frog, permitting connections to spread further.  The pattern continued down through the centuries until the modern era, where communities had become far more nuanced and complex.  In the main, connections were verbal and physical in nature.

That all changed with the arrival of digital mediums.  In 2006, only 18% of the world was online; that number is now over 50%.  Quickly, and radically, communication was happening without the need for physical or verbal proximity.  In 2014, the Pew Research Centre reported that 8% of American adults using social media in 2005 had mushroomed to 73% in 2013.  And that was just adults.  That number is now 90%.

So, it’s becoming clearer that the human social animal went through such a radical transformation in only a few years that it didn’t really get the chance to adjust to the reality that people were now networking instead of socializing.  It happened so fast, in a medium never part of history before, that it’s quite possible we weren’t prepared for its potential and pitfalls.  Social contact was quickly eclipsed by social media.  

This is vital to understand for a number of reasons.  For our purposes, it reminds us that while we enjoying the proliferation of connectivity, we were also unleashing language and motives that weren’t constrained by either custom or institutional memory.  In truth, we often behaved like juveniles – wanting power and responsibility without knowing how to handle it.  Wonderful things transpired, as information was available in an instant, but the mediums also unleashed a frequently unfiltered anger that only magnified over the years.  People who were never really “social” contented themselves with raging in their isolation.

Thus, in a period of only two decades, things happened that had never occurred in all of humanity’s journey.  It was heady.  It was empowering.  But it was also volatile and toxic.  We lumped it all in together, thinking we could sort it out.  Without realizing it, we were under the control of the digital realm – so much so that most users go to bed each night with their phone directly beside them.  Families spent less time together over the dinner table and more time alone in their rooms, where they could engage the broader digital world at will – unsupervised and unfettered.

In reality, we began to hoard, collecting everything we could and saving it to our devices.  Instead of physical contact, there was instead the digital universe, and we feed off it every day, often through multiple devices.  The result has largely been alienation and caution. 

Author Michael Harris believes that what is happening in the digital realm is what took place in the food realm over the decades.  At first junk food was a novelty, then a staple, and now an addiction.  The result is, as we have heard many times before, is half a world that is overweight and the other half in chronic hunger.  This is where Harris makes it interesting.  He maintains we have gorged ourselves on unhealthy digital sustenance and have become “social obese” as a consequence. – a fascinating insight.

We have become morally, emotionally and spiritually unhealthy as a result.  Where social constraints once held our harsher tendencies in check, or channeled them, the freedom of the digital frontier has brought with it frontier justice.  The old rules no longer apply.  There is no sheriff or law.  And it’s every person for herself or himself.  We have hurt one another and have been diminished and insecure in the process.  Worse, we have become alienated from one another at the very time communication is everywhere.  This is the activist’s dilemma.

My friend, Kim Parker, posted the following quote by Pema Chödrön on Facebook yesterday.   It’s a fitting conclusion for this piece:      

"When we hold on to our opinions with aggression, no matter how valid our cause, we are simply adding more aggression to the planet, and violence and pain increase. Cultivating nonaggression is cultivating peace. The way to stop the war is to stop hating the enemy. It starts with seeing our opinions of ourselves and of others as simply our take on reality and not making them a reason to increase the negativity on the planet."