Swipe, Tap, Ghost: The New Rules of Human Connection (#248)
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What are the new rules of human connection in the digital age?
Tech has made life much more comfortable and convenient. Everyone spends more time on their phones and their computers for work as well as for entertainment. But what is tech doing to us as individuals and more broadly to us as a society? Hi, everyone. I'm Lynne Thoman, and this is Three Takeaways. On Three Takeaways, I talk with some of the world's best thinkers, business leaders, writers, politicians, newsmakers and scientists. Each episode ends with three key takeaways to help us understand the world and maybe even ourselves a little better. Today I'm excited to be with Christine Rosen. Christine analyzes how technology alters human behavior. She is co-founder of the journal The Atlantis and a frequent contributor to Commentary, National Review, and other news publications. She is also the author of the wonderful book, The Extinction of Experience. I'm looking forward to learning how technology is changing us. Welcome, Christine, and thanks so much for joining Three Takeaways today.
Thanks, Lynn. I'm very glad to be here.
I'm excited. Tech has made life so much more comfortable and convenient. Are we spending less time in person with other people?
How does technology affect face-to-face interactions?
We are, and this is a fairly new thing in that we have a choice about whether we can be with each other in physical presence, face-to-face, having those sorts of conversations, or doing the same thing but with a screen between us and another person. Given the convenience, the ease, the efficiency, our ability to maybe mute or turn off a conversation that we're not enjoying, We're more and more often gravitating towards the mediated interaction with other people rather than the face to face. And I think over time, we develop habits and expectations of each other that are mediated through the technology. And that means when we are face to face and together in person again, we're not as good at what we used to do.
We've lost some of our skills and just interacting as human beings. Can you elaborate? What are we losing? One of the things that we're designed evolutionarily to do is to read each other's facial expressions. So we have all kinds of unspoken languages, as they say, with our gestures. So the way we use our hands, if our eyebrows go up and from the very moment that you open your eyes and in fact, an infant's field of vision is when you're being held. If you're an infant, it can see the person's face. So it's a very short distance, but it's meant to just focus on the face. So from a very young age, we're reading faces even before we can speak or articulate our feelings.
What are the implications of increased screen time for children?
When we spend a lot of time being interacted with and talked to and gestured, we are absorbing a million different things about what it means to be a human and how to communicate. But if you think about children today, if you put an iPad or a screen in front of their face from a very young age, maybe even before they're quite verbal and they're just staring transfixed at the screen, we've all seen this. They're seeing a lot of things on the screen, but they're not interacting with a fellow human being and seeing all the nuances, these sort of unspoken bodily signals that we give as they get older. They are not as good at reading other people. And I spoke to some diplomats, for example, who said it's a real challenge. The new kids coming in are bright. They're super sharp. They're ready to go.
They lack basic social skills. They don't know how to look someone in the eye and sustain a conversation. They're very ferocious. physically awkward when they're all thrown into a room together. And obviously for diplomats, that is a huge part of their job is reading signals across a negotiation table, meeting new people in perhaps somewhat hostile situations. So these are skills that are very qualitative. You know, it's difficult to quantify what they mean. But a lot of the people, particularly in the business world that I spoke to, said they notice a shift with each rising generation. The more time they've spent on screens, the more they have to do some basic people skill development of these teams when they come into the workplace.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What are the new rules of human connection in the digital age?
0:02–1:30
2
How does technology affect face-to-face interactions?
1:30–2:49
3
What are the implications of increased screen time for children?
2:49–4:18
4
Do our devices give us more power and control over our experiences?
4:18–7:35
5
Why are we becoming more impatient in the digital age?
7:35–9:09
6
How does impatience manifest in our daily lives?
9:09–19:56
Speakers
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