There’s an epidemic online, but it isn’t the digital age itself.
Online, people yearn constantly for a different world than the one they live in, seen in a genre of content rooted in nature. Content includes short videos ranging from 15 seconds to a minute and slideshows of photos (but no more than 10 photos in one post). Nature being the natural world – all things from the dirt in the ground we stomp on to the nuances of the human experience. For instance, a clip on TikTok shows blue waves rising out of the ocean, crashing into jagged cliffs at a bay, and leaving behind mist lingering in the air. The sunset reaches the horizon and creates a soft yet tawny filter over the video. A trending song’s chorus plays over it, whether the rest of the song is enjoyable or not. It is nostalgic and reminds people of summer. It is flooded with comments like I belong here – some comments even capture a transcendental experience, saying my soul belongs here. Other short video platforms are no different (and I’m sure YouTube shorts are of similar caliber, but I cannot speak from personal experience for this one). Content showcasing the people in nature, picnicking in a park, hiking on a trail, or swimming in a lake is captioned: this and never watching another reel.
The irony of dissing the digital age on platforms produced from it goes a step further when the platform itself is what allows the diss to be spread. Being born in the wrong generation is a conviction that people hold to themselves, a belief stemming from the feeling that the way we communicate and live today doesn’t align with who they truly are. Social media content captures the idea of being born in the wrong generation by comparing the present day to what should have been. It’s the modern day versus the past. Blue light, binge watching, and doom scrolling. The other side is Woodstock and jukeboxes. Fleetwood Mac and denim. Neon colors and MTV. Anything except vaping and the Kardashians. When people say, or think, that they are from the wrong time or generation, they ultimately argue that they have been displaced.
If the discontent people online have is due to some sense of displacement, then maybe this is what the Modernists were talking about. My English professor describes the Modernist framework as a hero’s journey. The hero is exiled, then forced to wander, and finally, in the end, returns. Exile, wander, return. The idea is that the forced exile, the displacement, or maybe even dislocation, for lack of a better word, allows the hero to undergo the development needed to establish the final return. Lepold Bloom, Rupert Brikin, and Adolf Verloc, our heroes who leave home only to be brought back with some new understanding of what they thought they knew. It seems that people on the digital frontier want to live the way the Modernists wrote; they want out and press forth with their journey, a journey that allows them to connect with the physical world around them. However, rather than wandering Dublin streets, the Tyrolean Alps, or London corners, we are left to wander the digital landscape, exiled from the physical world, and longing for more.
Those who came after the Modernists but before Gen Z will confidently point and say with their chest: it’s that damn phone. The desire compelling a whole generation to be unhappy is caused by the constant flick of a scroll and face to screen. The small devices that fit into our palms bring anxiety and depression. Meanwhile, life spans are getting shorter with attention spans. Algorithms turn to learn users better than users know themselves. The users are missing out on sunlight and authentic human interactions. They will say it is an epidemic.
For the past few weeks, my history professor has talked a lot about the technology’s evolution and its effect on the United States’ political climate. In the 80s, the developing web and online standards’ deregulation led to people saying more of what they wanted, especially if there was only one message they wanted to spread. Rising talk shows and online chat rooms created conversations about contentious topics that used to be left untouched by daytime TV. Race, gender, abuse, and addiction. People were granted greater opportunities to clash on differing viewpoints regarding issues affecting everyone. It is a trend that has intensified since the 80s, and we all know it because we are all a part of it. The divide between Americans perpetuated by the digital age is partially responsible for the disdain harbored against it.
It is not only the free discourse ensuing online, either. Now online, we are boggled with news headlines about crashing planes, the melting planet, and tariffs. We see movie stars acting like politicians, and politicians treated like movie stars. Online, it’s so painfully easy to see the worst. The world is constantly changing in ways faster than anyone can adjust. People are being hit with the stark realization that enough hatred for one thing is enough to bring many together. And it is not only politics either. There is a battle of aesthetics in culture defined by mobilization against one thing in support of another. Minimalism or maximalism. Blockbusters or independent films. Sabrina Carpenter or Olivia Rodrigo. At the end of the day, it is clearly more than that damn phone.
I think the anxiety about the world people feel can be attributed to screen time, to an extent, but it’s not all doomsday. I love seeing edits of characters from the TV shows I watch (Parker Posey’s fabulous, Southern, UNC-Chapel Hill alumna housewife character in The White Lotus, who has lines like I don’t even have my lorazepam. I’m going to have to drink myself to sleep). I have fun stalking the Instagram of people I have just met, and am excited for new posts from the ones that I have known. Lorde recently teased new music on social media, and it is about being seventeen, which I haven’t been for a while, but still know how it feels to be.
A few weeks ago, I was sick for what felt like a lifetime, but it was just the weekend. I could not stomach anything for two days, and the next time I did, it was applesauce and saltines. I texted my parents and friends, falling asleep between messages, waking up later and responding, and repeating the pattern until the weekend ended, when I was able to leave my room again. The digital world fosters an interconnectedness between humans physically separated, and it isn’t something that we have taken full advantage of yet. The last time we got close was five years ago, when long-distance relationships, professional and personal, and facemasks were the norm. People wished to stand closer than six feet apart and regretted not taking advantage of the world to which they once had full access. When the walls of the P-word came crashing down, people flooded back together, but that didn’t resolve feelings of displacement. Almost as quickly as people came out of their homes, they retreated to screens, like the same habits that came before, and once again found themselves disconnected from each other. If I think about it too much, comparing life before, during, and after the pandemic blurs the difference between loneliness and being alone.
Wishing for a better world than what we have is beyond valid; if anything, it’s probably one of the few things everyone has in common. The age we live in outside of the digital one is uncomfortable, and the discomfort is unavoidable, pervading every corner where one might seek refuge. The unease we feel from being attached to our screens is a daunting reflection of reality. Wandering grows to become aimless until the hero is entirely lost. The end of the long journey down a narrow way is obscure. Our phones feel heavier, we can not stop refreshing our emails, or avoid seeing breaking news—news that is not only breaking in the media but also breaking us inside. Perhaps this is what the Modernists had planned for the heroes they wrote to experience, and what it feels like to be dislocated.
I do not think abandoning screen time is the solution because it does not make the world or my own life feel any less fractured. Yet to take the time to slow down is a privilege that I cling to the same way I clung to my mom when I was seven years old in the grocery store. It is not a process I can strictly define for myself or anyone else, other than as physically slowing down: halting the mindless movement, resisting the urge to click refresh when something doesn’t load in three seconds, or speed-walking to class when I am barely five minutes early. When I do intentionally and willfully slow down, I notice things I would not have otherwise. My friend wears a gold, chunky bracelet, and the store she bought it from has student discounts. The weather app says it is going to be cold, but it’s also sunny, so I will not need my heavy coat. I have not called my parents in weeks, and I used to call them all the time. I hear the things my professors say, and I listen to them.
The constant hope for something to change and the claustrophobic discomfort might have a more convoluted answer than escape. I absolutely do not have that answer. But maybe it’s not about escaping the digital age or even fully returning from something lost, our version of exile. Recognizing that longing itself is proof we are still alive, even if it does not feel like it, and that we are still searching. And maybe knowing that is enough to confront the dislocation for now.