Digital Technology has penetrated every part of our life. We google all our needs. When we want to know the meaning of a word and check its spelling we google, when we are looking for ideas to speak and to write we google, when we want to eat something special we google check its availability, when we want to know the way to travel we google. We google at the detriment of human connections and interaction.
Human connections are the only means we can overcome our loneliness, feeling of isolation and seclusion. Many people, especially the youth and young adults tend to believe that digital technology based social networks and being in connection with internet sites can help in overcoming loneliness. But it is not so. The informed people and relationship experts believe that having constant access to technology, especially the smartphones, can prevent us from making personal connections. For many people, it has become a habit to reach for a smartphone any time they have a free moment, and this behaviour has made people lonelier than before.
Perhaps we have become slaves of internet, digital technology and cypher communication. We are living at the mercy of the internet and its operations. Certainly, the internet is a useful tool to make our life easy and simple. But it has taken over us and it has enslaved us to the extent that we cannot live without it. It is not an exaggeration to say that there are many young adults and even older people (unfortunately many children) are glued to internet and its related operations for several hours a day. Certainly not all the activities that we do on the internet are productive.
When our mobile phones are not working or if internet connectivity is lost many people today go almost into hysteria. Some years ago, during my stay in the United States of America, I witnessed a very funny incident in a train I traveled. I was travelling between New York and Boston. It was a picturesque journey. The train moves along the shores of Atlantic Ocean, many beautiful town and several pine forests. I sat at a window praying and reflecting. There were only eight people in a large carriage. All sat alone immersed in thoughts and doing their own things.
Something strange happened. A young lady in her mid-20s suddenly got up in front of me and looked disturbed and began to shiver. She was breathing hard with eyes wide open. She was holding a mobile phone in her hand. Showing her phone to others, she meted out distressing words, “My telephone has stopped working, can someone talk to me…” As she said these words knowingly or unknowingly she glanced at everyone and breathed hard and sat on her seat.
As I looked around, the reactions of people were all the more interesting. One pretended as though he saw nothing, another shock his head in disgust, two others laughed and I looked in amazement and went into serious thoughts for the rest of the journey.
I pitied the young woman for her addiction to internet and mobile phone. I felt sorry for her inability to control her emotions and things happening to her. As I felt embarrassed, I felt sorry for the embarrassment she caused to herself. I asked myself, how can such young people be helped? How can they come out of this new kind of addiction? And more so how can they overcome this feeling of loneliness that internet and the related gadgets cause to them?
What is the cause of loneliness in human beings? Disconnectedness within ourselves and disconnected with people around and disconnected with the nature that is around. Internet creates an apparent connectivity which is false and temporary. It is can be unreliable, erratic and impersonal. Human beings are ‘connected people’. We cannot live in an island. We need to live in harmony with ourselves, with others and with nature that sustains us. The disconnectedness pushes us to loneliness, emptiness, seclusion creating blankness in our mind and heart.
Internet and its applications, especially the social media sites, filled with mesmerizing images, endless information, and suggestions for our actions and attention, captivating entertainments and ‘social’ connections keep us glued to the virtual world. This realm is impersonal, detached from normal and meaningful life, and fails to fulfil the human need for connections that is flesh and blood. They stimulate our base emotions but does not satisfy the human need for meaningful connections and relationships.
Things that human beings get addicted to are always things of passing nature, temporary, nerve-affecting and often times harmful to our body, mind, heart and soul. They disintegrate our life within and outside.
When we fail to keep the created things in their right place and in right use, however they are good and useful they could be they because cause of our destruction. Let us use them for which they are created and needed and not putting our mind and heart entirely, lest they enslave us and create undue loneliness.
Digital technology which has given us Social media often becomes detrimental to your actual relationships. Let us ponder on the following quotes: “Social media users, post before they think.” “Digital citizens, think before you click.” “These days, common sense is not so common on social media. People often use internet communication as though they are alone on the World Wide Web.”
Young adults need to know and believe that internet and the numerous social media cannot replace human connections and relationships we build in actual relationships. Perhaps digital technology can only enhance and help in making our communication easier with people with whom we are already in bonding relationship. Not the other way around.
Fr. Lazar Arasu SDB,
Priest and School Administrator.
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