The Individual in the Time of the Smartphone

       The individual human being has borne the brunt of the changes the globalized world and its constituent societies have experienced over the last eighteen years; the individual may be the great casualty of these changes, but he may also be held accountable as their greatest cause.  The desire of the individual to be entertained or to have the next novelty is an aspect of basic human nature. From the desire in the individual to have what is new, and his willingness to pay for it, companies have been incentivized to constantly innovate regardless of the degree of actual need for a new technology to exist. As a result, technology has been created without consideration for the consequences to people or society. The most invasive and disruptive technology in recent times has been the internet coupled to the smartphone. 

       Though the internet existed before the millennium, the impact of this global network has only been fully experienced by the youngest generations.  Advances in the miniaturization of computers have allowed for the development of the ubiquitous smartphone. The ever increasing casual usage of the internet, resulting from the portability of the smartphone, combined with the advent of social media to produce a moment in history where virtually anyone, anywhere on the planet, could be in constant contact with any other person without hindrance to their communication.  Individual people from around the globe began constructing large networks of contacts that spanned the planet. In consequence of these personal networks and through the development of blogs, livestreaming audio, and video; individual people also gained the ability to become their own private media outlets.  This advance has been an amazing opportunity for the individual to express himself and reach a massive audience, without the support or approval of companies or other important individuals.

        Liberated from the filters of editors and media ethics, the free internet often leads unscrupulous individuals to use this medium to spread hate, lies, and rumors. Individuals are able to criticize and attack other individuals in previously impossible ways, and to do this with an anonymity and physical distance that gives them the inflated confidence to act with impunity. One result of billions of individuals saying whatever they want, whenever they want, is to create an information soup that the individual finds difficult to decipher. Increasingly it is difficult to tell the truth from the lies; society is becoming reduced to a state of paranoia.

       An additional effect of these technologies is the subtly increasing isolation individuals experience in the real world as they spend growing amounts of their time nurturing their virtual lives. Social media contacts coupled with portable technology, especially the camera on the smartphone, drive this development.   Real life presents difficulties that one can avoid by living a virtual life, so long as that virtual life is carefully curated. 

       Individuals with average lives can find themselves in contact with and in social-media competition with celebrities.  Celebrities photograph themselves at various occasions with other celebrities while doing interesting things. The individual with the banal existence finds himself editing his photos to emulate those of the celebrity.  He makes effort to stage photos so that he will appear interesting; in reality what he posts is an illusion. Those who do this constantly, become addicted to it. They become more concerned with how many likes they have on one of their photos or how many virtual friends they have collected on their profiles than what they actually have in reality. The obsessive nature of the habit, and the constant demands it makes to maintain, have the real world consequence of draining away the drive for real world achievement and fulfillment. The real is sacrificed to gain the temporary and the illusionary glory of social media success.  When reality interrupts the dream, the shock and confusion that result are all too real.

       Older generations remain surprised by these developments; younger generations accept them as typical. It is nearly impossible to intelligibly convey to new generations what life was before this technology existed, or that what is considered typical now is an unfortunate aberration resulting from the hasty adoption of new technology.  Though this technology is ever present, and its effects are currently seen in all aspects of people’s lives, an individual can also choose to limit the degree of disruption that it causes to his life. Even as the individual has access to this technology, he does not have to be defined by it.