As We Develop Digital Devices, Are We Devolving Our Society?

By: Chris Johnson

With the fast-paced nature of modern life, it’s easy to lose sight of how much of our day-to-day experiences are new to humanity. What we eat, what we drink, how we work, the medicines we take, what we do for fun, the sounds we hear, the light waves we see, our vehicles, the materials our homes are made of, the materials our clothes are made of, etc. etc. – the thousands of years of mankind preceding us never experienced and wouldn’t be able to imagine.

In the millennia of human history, a change to any one of those things would have been considered momentous. In 2024, we are so used to these conditions of our environment changing, that we get impatient when they don’t.

When I replaced my 2004 pickup with a 2013, one of the biggest things I was excited about was the ability to connect my phone to my vehicle with Bluetooth. When my wife got a newer vehicle last year, I had to learn to stop reaching for the ignition, and look for the start button. I drove a newer model vehicle lately and found that shifters have been replaced with little paddles for Drive, Reverse, Neutral, and Park.

When we went appliance shopping a few years ago, we ran across a “smart fridge” equipped with cameras inside so you wouldn’t have to open the door just to look for something. The tablet built into the door allowed you to make lists that would sync to your phone.

My brother, who’s a contractor, was telling me recently about the $8,000 toilet he’d installed in a client’s bathroom. The seat is warmed and automatically goes up and down so that it can be touch free, and doubtless there are many other bells and whistles none us ever knew we needed in a toilet as well.

How about cell phones? It wasn’t that long ago that batteries could be removed and cracked screens easily replaced, or that Blackberries and Palm Pilots were the only names in “smart phones.”

Rarely, however, have we looked back at these momentous changes and developments to see whether they’ve impacted our lives for the better or for the worse. We simply adapt and await the next development.

But perhaps, after decades of technological advancement and development, we’re finally in a position to look back and consider which versions actually served us best. Recently, a video was going around the social sites of a pickup truck Toyota was introducing on the world market. It has no frills – no touch screens, no Bluetooth, no digital displays – and it was being absolutely drooled over. For many pickup truck drivers, their vehicle is a tool and they miss the simple usability of previous generations of vehicles.

There’s also a rising demand for new, stripped-down mobile phone options, like the Lite phone, or the Unlocked phone which offer curated capabilities so that users can avoid the distractions and addictive nature of Android and Apple smart phones.

Just as most of us probably don’t see the need for cameras in our refrigerators, or self-lifting toilet seats, or to revolutionize the shifter levers in our vehicles, perhaps it’s time to consider that we might not need everything our digital devices have developed to offer us either.

Perhaps being constantly available, endlessly distractable, and unable to disconnect along with finding it nearly impossible to prioritize is not beneficial to humanity.

That’s definitely what schools who institute bans on digital devices are finding, at least. “I got so used to quiet hallways the last few years. They were just staring at their phones. When it started coming back, it was noticeable. And it was awesome. It reminded me of what the hallway used to be like — a loud conversation, kids engaged with each other. And that has nothing to do with instruction, but has a lot to do, in my opinion, with the psychological state of the school.” That’s how one Bethlehem, New York teacher described the change when the policy was implemented.

A City Journal article entitled Anxiety and Democracy digs into how that “psychological state” might also affect the wider society. “Members of the youngest generation are increasingly isolated and lonely. … A 2024 poll by the American Psychiatric Association found that 30 percent of Americans aged 18 to 34 said that they were lonely every day or several times a week.

“Our growing isolation might be contributing to a decline in social trust, as Harvard’s Robert Putnam has surmised. As we ‘bowl alone,’ inviting neighbors to fewer block parties and spending less time volunteering…, our trust in our fellow citizens diminishes…” As that Bethlehem teacher realized when students were forced to interact with each other, it’s much easier to see people as people when you’re looking them in the eye rather than replying to a post on social media. But tragically, so much of our social lives and our political debate has moved to the digital world, where it’s easy to dehumanize the other side of conversations as “accounts” rather than “people,” and say things we’d never say face to face.

As we’ve often said, our political problems have to be dealt with from the bottom up. It’s going to require individual, spiritual change, and one of the ways that spiritual change will manifest is when we remember how to treat each other – and ourselves – as “Images of God.”

I don’t think those smart refrigerators ever really took off, and I don’t see wide demand for smart toilets, either. To quote Jeff Goldblum’s character in Jurassic Park, “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

But the same can be said for much of what our mobile devices offer as well. For all the “convenience” they claim to offer, have they actually improved our lives?

 

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