If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you’ll know I’ve been resisting doing what is necessary to advance publicity for my writing. The actual act of writing I do religiously* but when it comes to the associated, business side of the craft I am, to be blunt, negligent.
It is therefore a personal milestone that most of you will find laughably trivial that I have accomplished.
I joined Instagram.
Hold the national holiday preparations for a moment and listen to me. This is going to be a post about my experiences in just a single day on the social media platform. I believe I understand something that had been eluding me for many years.
See, when I’ve watched my adolescent students between the ages of 13 and 18 become thralls to their phones (electronic pacifiers, I’ve been known to call the devices) I’ve said to myself, “this is such bizarre behavior. They’re obsessed with these things. As soon as I relax classroom discipline and allow phone access from the wall pockets where I force them to sequester their phones, the little darlings are positively glued to their screens. They shut out the rest of the world, they don’t talk to one another, they don’t watch the excellently produced video bulletin program–they’re enraptured by their little screens. Why is that?” I also have never understood the behavior of these same adolescents in their free time on campus: they are watching their phones, eyes half open, slumped over half-awake (or half-asleep, if you prefer) and not showing any signs of stimulation to the video they’re watching. How can this little phone have them so dulled, so willing to hand over their humanity?
So I did a little experiment. I tried to duplicate how young folks consume entertainment. I turned on YouTube on my phone, accessed a little video, and let it play. Then another video, related to the first, came up automatically. Then another, and so on.
God help me if I, too, didn’t catch myself becoming electronically drugged by the experience. It is all too easy to let oneself become numb, to allow the drug of the vast Internet to take hold and reduce you to a dull consumer.
It was eye opening, I’ll tell you. But what has this to do with Instagram?
I created my account and uploaded a publicity video that my publisher at EDGE wanted me to make (you should be able to find that video elsewhere on this site). It was not very difficult, though I had to navigate some technical issues on my desktop. Still, within an hour, I had the video up on my shiny, new Instagram account. I then spent a few minutes linking it to my Facebook account, posted a little message there, and shut the computer down to make the family lunch (grilled cheese panini on sourdough bread for Sue, same for James but with some ham added, and a salad for myself). That done, I remembered I still needed to add the Instagram app to my phone. I did so, and saw the little notification alert telling me I had some activity on my post.
Well, what do you know? Some of my friends had followed me and made little comments on the video.
As God as my witness, the little rush of emotion was something for which I was unprepared. That dopamine hit is powerful. It didn’t matter that I knew the brain chemistry behind it all, didn’t matter that I hadn’t cared about this just hours earlier–suddenly, for a moment, the little heart icon and the brief notifications telling me someone had looked at something I had written was my universe.
The feeling didn’t last, of course–but when it subsided, I realized–finally–what kids today are going through.
Yes, of course we should tell kids to put the phone down and talk to each other. Yes, going outside to play or reading a book or petting your dog or going camping with your family or attending a concert or playing tennis or [name some ordinary activity] is better than staring at your phone. Yes, kids today are addicted to things I wasn’t addicted to. But more to the point–those addictions DIDN’T EXIST. The closest thing we had to obsess over was sugary breakfast cereal.
Social media is engineered to be addictive–engineered by experts, fine-tuned by computer algorithms, funded by uncaring corporations (or sometimes messianic individuals who are themselves trapped in their own creations). Our poor kids have been seduced almost from the cradle with these sites, and have as little resistance to them as you or I would have had if we’d been subjected to them from an early age.
The human need to be loved, accepted, listened to–the need for positive attention–is strong and primal. A baby knows little when it is born, but it knows how to summon attention with a cry. Later, when your child shouts, “look, Daddy!” before performing a death-defying leap into the pool, it’s the same fundamental urge. We all have it, and it’s not wrong. There’s a reason solitary confinement is so torturous. Oh, there are some folks who thrive in solitude and anonymity. But for every Alexander Pope writing “Ode on Solitude,” there are ten John Donnes writing “No Man is an Island.”
FOMO is an acronym meaning “fear of missing out,” and it’s been applied to the young generation’s addiction to their phones and need to be constantly updated on their place in the social hierarchy. But I think we all have that, yes? It’s acute in the younger folks not because they are weak and silly but because social media (and the overall zeitgeist) has systematically and precisely targeted them. They’re being told every day, every hour, hell–every SECOND that they can be assured that they are being paid attention to, that they’re not missing out, if only they make an account and check it. All the time.
Keep getting those likes–that’s how you silence your own infant wail for mommy.
Storytellers in antiquity knew this. Odysseus, the craftiest and cleverest of all the Greek heroes, knew he’d never resist the sirens if left to his own wits. When tied to the mast, he fell under the Sirens’ spell and demanded to be let go. He’d made arrangements ahead of time to temporarily deafen his men with some well-placed wax earplugs, and thus was able to navigate past the Sirens. (I’ve often wondered how he got down: “Guys, we’re out of range of the Sirens, so you can cut me down. Guys? GUYS!)
Young folk, I’m going to keep taking your phones away. I’m going to keep trying to counsel you to experience real life. But I’m a lot more sympathetic now. What I only knew intellectually I now know from experience. I’ve felt it. It’s powerful, that song. But it needs to be resisted.
Be seeing you!
*strange term for an atheist to use, you say? No, I don’t think so. That’s how I feel about writing–it’s a ritual, a comfort, something that brings meaning to my life and something I do very consistently and faithfully. So there.
It is therefore a personal milestone that most of you will find laughably trivial that I have accomplished.
I joined Instagram.
Hold the national holiday preparations for a moment and listen to me. This is going to be a post about my experiences in just a single day on the social media platform. I believe I understand something that had been eluding me for many years.
See, when I’ve watched my adolescent students between the ages of 13 and 18 become thralls to their phones (electronic pacifiers, I’ve been known to call the devices) I’ve said to myself, “this is such bizarre behavior. They’re obsessed with these things. As soon as I relax classroom discipline and allow phone access from the wall pockets where I force them to sequester their phones, the little darlings are positively glued to their screens. They shut out the rest of the world, they don’t talk to one another, they don’t watch the excellently produced video bulletin program–they’re enraptured by their little screens. Why is that?” I also have never understood the behavior of these same adolescents in their free time on campus: they are watching their phones, eyes half open, slumped over half-awake (or half-asleep, if you prefer) and not showing any signs of stimulation to the video they’re watching. How can this little phone have them so dulled, so willing to hand over their humanity?
So I did a little experiment. I tried to duplicate how young folks consume entertainment. I turned on YouTube on my phone, accessed a little video, and let it play. Then another video, related to the first, came up automatically. Then another, and so on.
God help me if I, too, didn’t catch myself becoming electronically drugged by the experience. It is all too easy to let oneself become numb, to allow the drug of the vast Internet to take hold and reduce you to a dull consumer.
It was eye opening, I’ll tell you. But what has this to do with Instagram?
I created my account and uploaded a publicity video that my publisher at EDGE wanted me to make (you should be able to find that video elsewhere on this site). It was not very difficult, though I had to navigate some technical issues on my desktop. Still, within an hour, I had the video up on my shiny, new Instagram account. I then spent a few minutes linking it to my Facebook account, posted a little message there, and shut the computer down to make the family lunch (grilled cheese panini on sourdough bread for Sue, same for James but with some ham added, and a salad for myself). That done, I remembered I still needed to add the Instagram app to my phone. I did so, and saw the little notification alert telling me I had some activity on my post.
Well, what do you know? Some of my friends had followed me and made little comments on the video.
As God as my witness, the little rush of emotion was something for which I was unprepared. That dopamine hit is powerful. It didn’t matter that I knew the brain chemistry behind it all, didn’t matter that I hadn’t cared about this just hours earlier–suddenly, for a moment, the little heart icon and the brief notifications telling me someone had looked at something I had written was my universe.
The feeling didn’t last, of course–but when it subsided, I realized–finally–what kids today are going through.
Yes, of course we should tell kids to put the phone down and talk to each other. Yes, going outside to play or reading a book or petting your dog or going camping with your family or attending a concert or playing tennis or [name some ordinary activity] is better than staring at your phone. Yes, kids today are addicted to things I wasn’t addicted to. But more to the point–those addictions DIDN’T EXIST. The closest thing we had to obsess over was sugary breakfast cereal.
Social media is engineered to be addictive–engineered by experts, fine-tuned by computer algorithms, funded by uncaring corporations (or sometimes messianic individuals who are themselves trapped in their own creations). Our poor kids have been seduced almost from the cradle with these sites, and have as little resistance to them as you or I would have had if we’d been subjected to them from an early age.
The human need to be loved, accepted, listened to–the need for positive attention–is strong and primal. A baby knows little when it is born, but it knows how to summon attention with a cry. Later, when your child shouts, “look, Daddy!” before performing a death-defying leap into the pool, it’s the same fundamental urge. We all have it, and it’s not wrong. There’s a reason solitary confinement is so torturous. Oh, there are some folks who thrive in solitude and anonymity. But for every Alexander Pope writing “Ode on Solitude,” there are ten John Donnes writing “No Man is an Island.”
FOMO is an acronym meaning “fear of missing out,” and it’s been applied to the young generation’s addiction to their phones and need to be constantly updated on their place in the social hierarchy. But I think we all have that, yes? It’s acute in the younger folks not because they are weak and silly but because social media (and the overall zeitgeist) has systematically and precisely targeted them. They’re being told every day, every hour, hell–every SECOND that they can be assured that they are being paid attention to, that they’re not missing out, if only they make an account and check it. All the time.
Keep getting those likes–that’s how you silence your own infant wail for mommy.
Storytellers in antiquity knew this. Odysseus, the craftiest and cleverest of all the Greek heroes, knew he’d never resist the sirens if left to his own wits. When tied to the mast, he fell under the Sirens’ spell and demanded to be let go. He’d made arrangements ahead of time to temporarily deafen his men with some well-placed wax earplugs, and thus was able to navigate past the Sirens. (I’ve often wondered how he got down: “Guys, we’re out of range of the Sirens, so you can cut me down. Guys? GUYS!)
Young folk, I’m going to keep taking your phones away. I’m going to keep trying to counsel you to experience real life. But I’m a lot more sympathetic now. What I only knew intellectually I now know from experience. I’ve felt it. It’s powerful, that song. But it needs to be resisted.
Be seeing you!
*strange term for an atheist to use, you say? No, I don’t think so. That’s how I feel about writing–it’s a ritual, a comfort, something that brings meaning to my life and something I do very consistently and faithfully. So there.
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