I see others around me, those others I care for the most, jacked firmly into their handheld universes, leaving only the barest shell of a human being behind, leaving me treading in desperation over the thinnest surface of a relationship, hoping to occupy those fleeting moments of transition in the ongoing flow pulsing across the slick screens in their palms.
And I frequently end up there too, of course. I all-too often find myself seduced into digitally constructed worlds of distraction. The irony here is that the more time we spend distracting ourselves with these invented worlds of hollow meanings, the more we need to be distracted from our ever-hollowing lives. We are filling ourselves to the very brim with emptiness in a frantic attempt to keep our feelings of emptiness at bay.
Research has confirmed the association between time spent with online social networking sites and depression, for example. And regardless of the direction of the causal relationship—whether online socializing causes depression or depressed people seek relief in online social distraction—our insatiable desire for increased connectivity suggests that there is something lacking in our lives, something essential, something authentically human.
And, yes, there is deep irony in my choice to express these sentiments in the form of a blog post.
