Another GRE essay …

The documentary ‘The Social Dilemma’ draws upon hundreds of hours of interviews from tech executives including the inventor of Facebook’s ‘like button’ to show how smartphones and tablets have been used by tech giants to manipulate and influence the lives of teenagers and adults alike. The alluring draw of instant and constant connectivity, the makers of the documentary claim, is something to be wary of, especially because of the subconscious ways in which technology seeks to influence our thoughts, feelings, interactions, and habits. In a particularly striking scene, the documentary depicts a hologram of a fictional user suspended in digital space like a biological specimen preserved in formaldehyde, ready to be dissected: that digital persona resembles the human only in form, but is a starkly different figure on the inside. The indelible and grave impact that portable devices and the software they run have on young people is most prominently shown in their social skills, which seem to become increasingly stunted and awkward.

To be sure, social media and the mobile phones and tablets they run on can also be tools for the good: they can bring together individuals who would never have had the opportunity to see each other in person before, to associate with individuals beyond physical bounds, and form communities of interest with those they find kinship and comradery with. But these very benefits have transformed into its ills. Portable electronics and constant connectivity is a double-edged sword, but one edge seems to be sharper than the other.

Increasing use of electronic devices entails an opportunity cost, according to the logic of the reason and the claim presented. Every minute spent pondering over a phone is a minute spent ignoring those in front of us. I spent eight hours on my phone and tablet yesterday, between texting my friends, responding to emails all day, and checking social media incessantly to see whether someone had responded to my comments or shared something with me. Instead of using it as a tool to contact my friends to set up a dinner or a casual meetup later in the day, I used it to reach out to friends who I could have just as easily met. My experience is but one among countless others. Social media and electronic devices, once destined to be used as tools to make our lives easier, to enable us to communicate with the world and search for information easily that would otherwise take countless hours and backbreaking effort to find, have now become ends in themselves. Our usage of them expands to fill up any free time that we may have.

The necessary victim of this are our social skills. By removing expression and emotion from our conduct, which is now reduced to words and cute icons, we omit from our social existence an important part of us. Our interactions are more prone to misunderstandings and conflict because the screen does not offer room for doubt and ambiguity, but instead pushes us to assume the worst. We develop myopias, echo chambers that reinforce our beliefs instead of challenging them. Take, for example, the notorious website 4Chan, which started off as a harmless meme page and is now the trolling grounds for all sorts of fascists and Neonazis and white supremacists, through the subtle effects of the echo chamber. By being constantly connected to this alternative reality, we loose track of what is happening in the world we inhabit. Soon, we might forget to read social cues and gestures and to recognise emphasis in voices. The artificial nature of these interactions, unfettered by reality, and the alternative world it creates directly competes with the world we inhabit in our physical bodies and existences.

The philosopher Aristotle wrote that virtue is the mean between excess and deficiency. However, based on recent trends and data, young people are being exposed to technology at a troubling rate, and will necessarily fall back in their social skills and development. The writer Jamie Susskind worries about the future of our society when it is inhabited by a world brought up on an ever-rising dose of information overload, constantly wedded to their screens. In our youth, we are most prone to the negative effects of these devices because we are at an age where we lack in self control. We seek excess, but the only cure to this malaise is moderation.