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A Digital Life
Smartphones and computers keep us connected 24/7. But is that such a good thing?

By Aneesh Dubey
You’ve surely heard someone say: “Remember the good old days when the only way to be in touch was through land-line phones and snail mail? Life was so peaceful.” Conversations around these lines are fairly common as a growing number of people try to mask their digital addiction by laying the blame on technology. The rapid evolution of the Internet, smartphones, and social networking sure has changed the way we live, but damning all this as the devil because the ‘good old days’ were so ‘great’ seems a bit too much.

The social impact analysis of any change is incorrect if it is approached with the inherent bias of considering the past to being better. A major technological - and social - change has happened, and it is here to stay; we must hence look at it without the tinted glasses of the past. So next time someone rues, “people do not write letters anymore”, the retort should be “because we don’t need to”. We have evolved!

CONNECTION AND COMMUNICATION
We as individuals, as well as a species, are more connected than ever before. Our social lives can be more gratifying as we have become more closely-knit and are in instant contact with friends and relatives. Immediate access to information, regardless of the geographic distance of the origin of information, has put us on the top of an information pyramid. Our smartphones, tablets, and PCs are our eyes and ears to a babble of information being generated across the globe. This has made us more aware, informed, and progressive as instant communication and information consumption allows us to be at the forefront of whatever is happening - wherever. The flipside, and of course there is one, is that our perception has been irreparably distorted. We’ve started believing our virtual eyes and ears more than our real sensory organs. We are somehow convinced that a couple of text messages, a phone call, and a Facebook ‘like’ are a good substitute for face-to-face interaction with people. We do not trust reality unless it is on the Internet. In effect, the virtual world has, instead of augmenting our reality, substituted it. This substituted reality changes fast, at the speed of a click - with some blaming it for an increased rate of psychological disorders like Attention Deficit Disorder and hyperactivity.

HYPER-CONNECTED LIFE
Connectivity has transformed the way businesses work. With real time information systems, an integrated global workforce, and uninterrupted communication, organisations are perpetually connected. Any employee can be reached anytime. This has led to smudging of the borders between work and leisure, complicating social behaviour in all these places. A person is neither completely at office nor fully home – straining relationships and causing mental dissonance. People wake up and reach for the phone to check e-mail; family time is interrupted by work calls; children choose to be online over being at the dinner table; and work is hindered by chat hails from friends. When a person is with you, he is also with his complete friend list and mailbox, never completely in one conversation. Even by himself, a person is unable to be alone. Connectivity has led to an all-encompassing lack of privacy. Another aspect of the loss of this privacy is the loss of ownership of your personal information. The almost-unrestricted access to an individual’s personal information allows anyone to influence, market, and threaten. Personal Internet time can be monitored at office, phone calls and emails tapped by the government, online browsing history used to ‘personalise’ advertisements, etc. It is true that personal privacy could still be lost before our digital era came about, but the ease by which it happens today is disconcerting.

WORK-NET
Businesses have gained from connectivity, but not without queering the pitch for employees. Perpetual connectivity causes the assumption of perpetual availability. The boss can send an email at midnight and expect a reply, ASAP! Such inflated expectations lead to work-related stress and burnout. On the other hand, there is a loss of productivity as employees spend time on social networking sites and chat rooms - wasting perhaps several hours each day!

Individuals’ privacy is threatened as more and more organisations monitor web activity, check off-work behaviour, scan and judge prospective hires, and even restrain personal online freedom. Cases of work termination due to online indiscretion have ruffled quite a few feathers. And you’ve definitely read news reports of employers asking for Facebook passwords before making a job offer!

PHYSIOLOGICAL & PSYCHOLOGICAL IMPACT
People who are connected all the time - which is essentially everyone - behave in a strange, erratic manner if their phone loses signal, or if their Internet connection goes down; it’s almost as if they find it difficult to breathe if denied connectivity even for a very brief period of time. Psychologists have been using the term ‘disconnectivity anxiety’ to describe the symptoms. Anxiety causes stress and depression, not to mention social awkwardness. Terms like ‘Facebook sabbatical’ or ‘Twitter cold turkey’ acknowledge the fact that the compulsive usage of social networking platforms is widely considered to be addictive. This addiction, like any other, disrupts normal behaviour, leads to compulsive actions and can even wreck your social and personal life - rather ironic considering that it is ‘social’ networks causing it.

A strange loss of trust in personal choice is also something that can be attributed to being connected. One no longer believes something just because they either choose to or have looked at the facts - the belief now needs to be ratified by their social circles; approved, liked, shared, and reviewed. The need for social approval is innate to human behaviour, but a compulsive need for it in all walks of life can be tagged a psychological disorder.

The physiological effects are also making their new vocabulary felt; mouse-wrist, Blackberry thumb, etc. are all health related effects of technology overuse. There are more, such as eye disorders, posture-related issues, and general body ailments due to a lack of proper exercise. It might be said that the human body has not yet evolved enough to handle the amount of technology thrust upon it.

Adult minds are able to differentiate between online and offline life for they’ve seen a time when not everything was connected. This ability is being lost with the current generation of children, whose birth stories are shared on Facebook and Picasa. This new generation of connected kids might be a cause for concern. Numerous research studies have shown how kids' excessive online exposure negatively affects their mental development and social attitudes. It is essential for children to grow up in a protected environment with information being made available only as their minds grow old enough to understand and comprehend it. A connected world does not make this distinction; unregulated information flow at a young age can cause various problems. In any case, humans have to acknowledge that with the new connections, life is never going to be the same again. We will have to call upon our most basic instinct – of adapting to change – and grow alongside technology. The future will not be good or bad, but it’ll sure be different. Who knows, over a long enough period, our bodies might evolve as well to accommodate our essential need to be online!