Technology is making us less connected than ever

Adults who otherwise lead full and responsible lives are rendered mute by their phones, complains Kate Langbroek. And it means people are increasingly isolated.

Stellar columnist Kate Langbroek laments a simpler time, before technology became the only way we interact socially. Picture: Cameron Grayson.

IN the beginning, there was television, and television was good. Well, I assume it was good. There was nothing to compare it to, you see, except the wireless or the picture shows at the cinema. And television was much better because it was in your own home, or in pride of place in Aunty May’s lounge room, or even in the window of the local Retravision, where crowds would gather to watch the Olympics or something the Royals were doing. Really, it must have seemed like magic.

And if you are lucky enough to know people from the first TV generation, they will tell tales of everyone sitting around to watch Graham Kennedy and Bert Newton — and when they say “everyone”, they mean the whole family. Because they would all watch the same show and talk about it at supper or at work the next day, or even at school — it was a shared experience.

Even then, there must have been the naysayers. My mother, for instance (who loves to reminisce about times before she existed), will recount scenarios of families clustered around the piano, where they would belt out a robust “Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport” before they turned in — a ritual the “one-eyed monster” (TV, not my mother!) apparently brought to a hasty end.

The footpaths are littered with people who look like those novelty birds stooped over glasses of water.

Anyway, now it is hard to share, unless you count huddling around someone’s phone to watch a YouTube video. Everyone has the equivalent of a TV in their pocket and can download or stream or binge-watch whatever they want, whenever they want. The concept of sitting down together to watch a “television event” seems so ancient, it would require a team of archaeologists to unearth an example of it.

It has been a creeping thing, our dependence on this brilliant source of information; instant weather, gossip and sports results, so the world seems full of people shuffling along, heads bowed, eyes glued to screens. We can’t look up; physios are inundated with cases of “tech neck” and the footpaths are littered with people who look like those novelty birds stooped over glasses of water.

Adults who otherwise lead full and responsible lives are rendered mute by their phones.

It’s funny — ads for computers and phones all sell the concept of being “connected”, but the reality seems to be the opposite. We are isolated. Earbuds in; immersed in our own experience. And everyone, it seems, is becoming aware of their inability to step away from screens. The addiction. Adults who otherwise lead full and responsible lives are rendered mute by their phones; possessed by a kind of passive agitation that manifests in a need to constantly scroll through social media, or see who they can hook up with on Tinder or Grindr or Tumblr, or any other online refuge for people who seemingly hate vowels.

It is first thing in the morning; it is the last thing at night. It is full of all the wonders and horrors of the world. It is insistent. It is persistent. It is succour and solace and humour and music and cat videos and knowledge and pornography and extreme violence.

Gosh, I wish I could play the piano.

Kate co-hosts Hughesy & Kate, 4-6pm weekdays, on the KIIS FM Network.

Originally published as Technology is making us less connected than ever