GTFO: the chronic online epidemic and how it’s affecting us
One of the buzzwords for 2022 was “chronically online”, a term used to describe someone who can’t look away from the constant drip of information that comes from the rectangle of metal, glass, and silica in our pockets. It’s used somewhat lightheartedly to poke fun at our friends who never seem to look up from their phones. Though, despite the term's sudden prevalence it doesn’t seem to be creating any meaningful action in people. It’s a descriptor but not a call to action. One would think that hearing the medical language of chronic (not the good type of chronic) would make people second guess their behavior, especially if it’s something that your friends are saying about you. If someone is literally telling you to go “touch grass” because you haven’t gone offline in ages, that should be a sign that something has to change.
One of the roots of being chronically online is a sort of fatalism that Western Culture has propped up around technology. We view new technology and things like social media as inevitable forms of progress. There’s never a question about whether should we use a new technology or if we need to rethink our relationship with it. Once it’s been widely adopted, we don’t really have a choice but to use it. It’s the same thing that happened with fossil fuels. Even after we found out about the consequences, we just let status-quo inertia keep us locked into technologies that destroy our environment. Now instead of environmental damage, we’re seeing societal and mental health damage. Problems like being “chronically online”. These so-called inevitabilities are just business models. These companies all rely on us being “chronically online” because it means our eyes are on their products, which in turn makes them money. With that incentive, they’ve done all they can to make it seem like their platforms are the real world so that we spend all of our time on them. It’s why they’re trying so hard to get us all to buy into the Metaverse. It’s business, not fate.
Despite the clumsiness of the Metaverse rollout, a lot of us already live in a Metaverse of sorts, social media. Social media is the world many of us live in. That’s where the in-group of celebrities, influencers, and notable persons all are. Our societal norms and biological drives of wanting to be part of this group cause us to be glued to our specific circle. We have to be caught up on the going-ons of that in-group in order to feel like we have social currency in our circle. If you fall behind on the most recent TikTok trend or Instagram drama, you feel like you’re left behind from the group. This fear of being left behind causes you to stay online for longer and longer periods. This constant cycle of trying to stay up-to-date makes you believe that the world is the one behind the screen and not the one you’re sitting in. So in a sense to be alive in America is to be chronically online.
This mistake of believing the world is just the online one is the crux of being chronically online. It causes us to become passive observers of a world that truly isn’t ours. We may share these observations with those we’re close to, but still, all we’re doing is observing others. You’re not thinking your own thoughts, you’re not living your own life. It’s just a constant race to be the most informed and always have the latest news. That’s a race you can’t win. The tech writer L. M. Sacasas writes about how social media is inherently always in the past. Posts are never in the present and are technically out of date the second they’re sent. Reading them takes you out of the moment and takes you back to when they were posted. So being chronically online means being chronically behind.
To “touch grass” is one of those terms that Gen Z has memed into oblivion, and leads to groaning every time it’s mentioned. Despite this, I kind of like it because it feels like it’s related to being grounded. It’s telling you to get outside and reconnect with something real. The meaning and power of that may get lost with the memefication of it all, but the intention remains. We all need to find our footing and get grounded again. We need to touch grass. However you want to describe it, the benefits are hard to understate. When you start to live in the real world, the brain fog starts to lift. You’re able to think again, and you start noticing things. It’s like getting glasses, things start to clear up. Stepping outside you actually hear things, it’s not just background noise, it’s the noise of the world. You feel the wind, the ground, and the air. Colors become more vivid. Eating a meal without scrolling changes the way you taste food. You feel like you’re actually alive and a part of something. That’s what we’re missing with being chronically online. We’re so busy following other people’s lives that we’re not living our own. We miss out on creating memories because we’re too busy watching someone else’s. We mistake other people’s fun for our own. Instead of having our own complex lives filled with adventure, joy, sadness, drama, we fill our heads with others. We move from one headline to the next, endlessly texting our friends about the latest post without ever really engaging with each other. This isn’t how life is supposed to be lived. We’re each given the gift of life and the ability to live it, it’s a waste to just sit idly by confusing endless scrolling as that life.
I don’t want to be the curmudgeon yelling at people my age and younger to get off their phones. I also don’t want to be some martyr who acts like I’m above all of this. My friends and I still text and DM each other about ridiculous stories we see or breaking news about things we care about. Admittedly, a decent amount of Worldstar and TMZ videos still make their way into my inbox. I also still try to stay up on pop culture, politics, science, and other topics that I care about. The thing is though I want to be able to have my own thoughts about these things. I don’t want to just keep scrolling and never take a moment to just think about what I’m reading. I want to incorporate them into my life without them being my life. I want to live my own life and have my own stories to share with my friends, I want to share experiences with my friends that are more than us just sending TikToks to one another. That’s what I want to encourage people to do. We can still be online, but we can do it mindfully. We can choose another way to be. Being chronically online isn’t inevitable. Being trapped in the Metaverse isn’t inevitable. We can choose another way to live. We can create a new direction where we use the technology and it doesn’t use us. So just put your phone down for just a minute, there’s a whole world waiting for you.