How Did We Become so Connectedly Disconnected?

Are cell phones helping us connect or making us lonely?

Photo by rawpixel

People staring at their phones are such a familiar scene, it is a poster for our times, and everybody knows that. We can’t wait to check those tiny shiny screens to escape boredom. But by constantly doing so, we isolate ourselves into remote islands.

We are hopelessly addicted to our phones, myself included. But this virtual pleasure world is lonely, where our friends are avatars and thumbnails. We can’t ever get enough, and in the end, dissatisfaction and injury to our eyes and neck are the results.

We think we are connecting to others, but nothing is happening; we still ain’t got a life. Was it better when we didn’t have phones? Yes and no.

We are creatures of comfort, and we’ll settle for what’s convenient and easy. We’re cool to see a picture of a friend instead of being with a friend; we’ll settle for whatever we find. The brain thinks we have some life. But we like to stay in the comfortable world of armchairs and slick screens. It’s safer and more manageable that way.

But there is a problem with not being real. By default it creates, deep dissatisfaction, boredom and depression

We live in a weird social media phone world paradox. The more Facebook friends we have, the less we think we need them. The brighter our phones, the less we need to be smart because our phones have already figured things out for us. We rely on them for everything. A total illusion

The more ways we have in which to communicate, the less content we get from these communications. The more e-mails you receive, the higher the chances you’ll never even read them. It’s like diabetes. Your cells are exposed to too much insulin and become insulin resistant. So, what can we do to fix this? The problem is that we are hardwired for pleasure

The dopamine reward pathways in our brain peak at the anticipation period [2]. We get the biggest pleasure kick during the moments prior to receiving the reward. Having said that, we are completely powerless trying to resist reaching for our phones. Let me check my e-mail one more time or see if someone liked my cute cat video, even though I just did that a minute ago…