In recent years, many advances in technology have moulded our lives to be safer and more convenient, at the cost of making us and the world we live in duller and more isolating. More and more aspects of our life which previously necessitated social interaction have been made possible (and easier) without it. This ranges from the little things such as Amazon making the high street redundant, to online university and dating apps.
Not to sound like an old soul reminiscing about a period in time that I never lived through, but it has become incredibly easy to live a successful life with very little social interaction. None of these things have been forced upon us, but the convenience of these alienating elements are so strong that they needn’t be. Recorded lectures and uploaded slides mean that one could conceivably go an entire course only attending tutorials, drastically reducing the amount of time one has to spend with people outside of their pre-selected social bubble.
Speaking for myself and many other humanities students that I know, the amount of course friends we have pales in comparison to STEM students. With their contact hours looking similar to a full-time job, there is far more compulsory time wherein you can get to know the people you are studying alongside.
This convenience can be seen quite clearly with online dating. Hinge, the app of choice for students in Edinburgh, has some immediate appeals over the old-fashioned methods of approaching someone in person, or being set up by/dating a friend. Firstly, the rejection exists entirely on your phone, massively reducing the potential humiliation from being rejected in real life. Secondly, being able to date someone whose existence is unknown to any of your pals means that if you really muck it up, the splash-back is going to be fairly minimal (this also means no one has to behave as well as they ought to). Not having to see your ex-girlfriend at every pub trip/flat party/club night/society event is ideal.
But through this convenience we are cutting bits of ourselves off. In a typical week we can spend three hours slack-jawed and silent in tutorials, go out to meet someone off Hinge we have no mutuals with, and go to the pub with our friends. We can divide ourselves into a dating component, an academic component, and a social component, with no crossover necessary.
The point is not to say that convenience is bad in itself, or that negative experiences are more worthwhile than positive ones, but that this convenience that is all too enticing to many of us has a suffocating effect. We become safer, less interesting people, the highs and the lows are both flattened out. To quote the Happy Mondays, a “plastic face can’t smile.”
“Playmobil” by Sirius™ is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
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In recent years, many advances in technology have moulded our lives to be safer and more convenient, at the cost of making us and the world we live in duller and more isolating. More and more aspects of our life which previously necessitated social interaction have been made possible (and easier) without it. This ranges from the little things such as Amazon making the high street redundant, to online university and dating apps.
Not to sound like an old soul reminiscing about a period in time that I never lived through, but it has become incredibly easy to live a successful life with very little social interaction. None of these things have been forced upon us, but the convenience of these alienating elements are so strong that they needn’t be. Recorded lectures and uploaded slides mean that one could conceivably go an entire course only attending tutorials, drastically reducing the amount of time one has to spend with people outside of their pre-selected social bubble.
Speaking for myself and many other humanities students that I know, the amount of course friends we have pales in comparison to STEM students. With their contact hours looking similar to a full-time job, there is far more compulsory time wherein you can get to know the people you are studying alongside.
This convenience can be seen quite clearly with online dating. Hinge, the app of choice for students in Edinburgh, has some immediate appeals over the old-fashioned methods of approaching someone in person, or being set up by/dating a friend. Firstly, the rejection exists entirely on your phone, massively reducing the potential humiliation from being rejected in real life. Secondly, being able to date someone whose existence is unknown to any of your pals means that if you really muck it up, the splash-back is going to be fairly minimal (this also means no one has to behave as well as they ought to). Not having to see your ex-girlfriend at every pub trip/flat party/club night/society event is ideal.
But through this convenience we are cutting bits of ourselves off. In a typical week we can spend three hours slack-jawed and silent in tutorials, go out to meet someone off Hinge we have no mutuals with, and go to the pub with our friends. We can divide ourselves into a dating component, an academic component, and a social component, with no crossover necessary.
The point is not to say that convenience is bad in itself, or that negative experiences are more worthwhile than positive ones, but that this convenience that is all too enticing to many of us has a suffocating effect. We become safer, less interesting people, the highs and the lows are both flattened out. To quote the Happy Mondays, a “plastic face can’t smile.”
“Playmobil” by Sirius™ is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
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