What does this mean and why do we accept is so quickly? Gen Z would tell you that if you’re not online you don’t exist. Businesses seek to find context from your career through online spaces. Our family and friends afar only know your life continues if you post about it (or choose to go against the grain, pick up a phone, and call).
This idea is baked into even the technology of the smartphone, which didn’t exist a mere fifteen years ago. Navigation, communication, productivity- how would we go about these operations without our devices? As Tim Cook said yesterday, these are “products that are so indispensable in our lives” (theCEO of the biggest tech company in the world is certainly has no agenda in his philosophy of needs). We swallow this story with such speed and gratitude that to question a platform or technology’s place in our lives is anathema. It’s only viewed as counter-productive to walk back from the supposition that our lives require these.
To expound upon Neil Postman’s vital work here, technology doesn’t invite close examination of its consequences for two reasons: its convenience and its inevitable relationship to culture. We became a tool-using culture to relieve toil. Then we became a tool-worshipping culture to fill the hole left by our lack of struggle with life (or, our struggle with life became our struggle with a lack of struggle). Because of the innocuous nature of our tools, we fall into habits of integrating and assigning. We integrate tech into every part of our lives and assign it to watch over our calendar, relationships, memory, money, and lifestyle. This dual process leads us to the conclusion so many think in ignorance and say in despair.
Here is the truth: you don’t need social media. Forget endless conversations about why you would not want it (see the list of cons that vastly outnumber any pros) and consider what’s on offer. Inescapable chains to a way of being (formative to your whole person) that coopts your attention and identity to make the richest not among us even richer. The very framing of this problem presents the solution: break the chains, delete the accounts, and change the story of your life.
