The Boundaries
Is anyone else feeling nostalgic?
I can’t quite put my finger on it. Perhaps it’s the fast pace we live in, but hasn’t it always been so? Perhaps it’s the 24/7 interconnected world? Maybe? The fact remains recently I’ve found myself looking back to seemingly simpler times. Not that they actually were of course. The world of the 80s and 90s had its own set of worries and problems that seemed like they would never be resolved. The fact is they were, but they were also replaced by an entirely new set of problems that I, we, didn’t know we had.
Not that I despise technology. Anything but to be honest. I like to think it’s made me more productive, more organized, but like any technology magic it does come at a price, deary, and that price is the endless constant contact with one another. The rise of the smartphones had a hand in that, but more so it may have been social media. Texting between phones was late to catch on in the United States compared to most countries, but it’s important to note the ability was always there – just under utilized. It was really social media, the posting of pictures and what people had for dinner that really started the brush fire that has never really gone out. Even less worthy, it also gave rise to a cyber bullhorn for hate speech and rhetoric.
It becomes necessary then to periodically disconnect, and I find myself doing that more. Which is why I strain to remember the age when none of this existed. I can only imagine what it’s like for those that are younger who don’t have any memory to fall back on. None of us can remember an age where there wasn’t indoor lighting for example. We walk into a dark room and we reach for the switch. The days of having to light a candle have long since passed, and those from that era (in developed countries at least) have left us. So it is with the children of today. The iPhone came out in 2007. The BlackBerry years before that.1 Which means an entire generation has grown up with some form of the device that has evolved and improved over the years. A camera, a text message, a search engine has always been in their hand. To think of an age where it didn’t exist is incomprehensible to them, and rightfully so.
Both as an undergrad, and then later grad school, I remember having to go to the computer lab to log into my email – and the rudimentary web platform didn’t look anything like the client application. If I was waiting for an email from a professor I could maybe check it twice a day – once in the lab on campus, or else I’d have to wait until I returned home for the night after work. That limitation was a forced disconnection, and that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. I find that there’s a level of added anxiety that has built up in culture as a result of constantly needing to pull out a phone to check to see if an email has been replied to, or if a text message has been read. If it shows it has them there’s even more anxiety of why haven’t they replied? Its been ten minutes already! Chill. Give people time to respond. Which only demonstrates the even greater need for disconnecting.
I’m not hypocritical on this. I love my phone, or at least the capabilities my phone affords me to be more productive, but being more productive means working smarter and not harder. Work is exactly what it sounds like. Work, and there needs to be boundaries. Which is why I enable focus modes for various apps. These apps are silent while I’m at work, and these apps can notify me when I’m home, and these others can wait until after 9 p.m. when (if I’m in the mood) I can check to see if someone posted a photo of their pet. The remaining hours are mine. Those are the boundaries, and while I admit like many I didn’t always adhere to them in the past it was mainly because those features weren’t necessarily there. Even the manufacturers of the phones have realized the need to disconnect – which I’m sure was influenced by customer surveys and enhancement requests. Focus modes and notifications management becomes more refined in every release no matter what your flavor of phone. It’s important to investigate and use them.
Maybe I’m unique? I’ve never looked at my phone as a toy but instead a tool. With that perspective maybe it’s easier for me to disconnect? Perhaps not? It’s important, however, to know the difference between the two and manage it accordingly. Do I follow social media while watching television, sporting events? Of course, but not always, and it isn’t required. Some nights it enhances the game, and other nights I don’t pick up the phone at all. It depends. The important thing is to put it down, and that’s what’s important. I find when I do so it brings back fond memories of a bygone age. No, they weren’t simpler, and they weren’t any less stressful, but they were disconnected from Big Brother. From that perspective I like to think there was a little less hate in the world, and that wasn’t a bad thing.
- Remember the slang CrackBerry? Already early on the addiction of the smartphone was being liken to crack cocaine. ↩︎