School shootings have steadily increased in the U.S. since the 1980s. Born in 1995, I grew up in an America that has experienced the trauma of school shootings time and time again. This re-trauma has gradually made the public numb to the repetitive anguish these events entail. Access to technology and the internet has been steadily increasing since the 1990s. Rapid technological advancements have led to instability among an already challenging population, American adolescents.
At an early age, whether I realized it or not, I was at the precipice of a social chasm. I grew up with both physical and digital forms of entertainment. On the one hand, I grew up reading books. I had an extensive collection, probably gathering dust at my parent’s house as I write this. In addition, my father read the New York Times, of which I read the Sunday Comic strips.
On the other hand, I grew up with video games and cartoons. My parents had restrictions on the latter, which waned as I grew older. However, my age paralleled the pervasive reach of technology. Initially, the transition from physical to digital began innocuously via MySpace and the introduction of the first iPhone. Over time my attention was no longer divided between the two. Still, it was instead dominated by the offerings of digital media.
The result of this shift is polarizing in adolescence. Interpersonal relationships changed as instant messengers began to “make or break” juvenile connections. Technology also became a vessel of information that led to children “knowing” better than their parents. Adolescence is already a tumultuous time for teens to figure out who they are and their place in the world. But with its innocuous beginning, teens became dependent on technology. And unlike physical media, which remained a constant in its reach and pervasiveness, digital media became overwhelmingly engrained in society.
There is no longer an off button; our dopamine reward system has been hacked, and our dependence on devices still grows today. I realized this early in high school and wrote my first research paper centered around Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together. Turkle’s novel elaborates on how the rules of engagement have changed with technology, where people have never been so connected at any point in history, yet, there is a sense of detachment and emptiness. People are increasingly investing time in a digital persona and less in others. The community is lost. Ideals are forgotten. Technology is used to bombard you with information on what you need, what you think you want, and the kind of person you should be.
But technology is fickle and changes from one moment to the next. It does not provide stability to a growing mind. In this way, minds are made malleable by technology. A paradigm shift in culture via technology has caused many degrees of separation between each other. It cultivates a need to be an envisioned archetype of the person formulated after years of conditioning on online platforms. But life is not as glamorous as it is made out to be digital. People only sometimes share their failures publicly and curate how they want to be seen. It is more complex than physical media to avoid. No longer can you set the newspaper down. We are now in a perpetual state of being connected yet disjointed. It has led to the most significant challenge to adolescents’ mental health ever.
Some of these teens may now indeed be “alone together” and seeking a sense of belonging. Teens become so focused on themselves to fit into a presumed identity as they are testing the world around them. Yet this is perilous as it depersonalizes the interactions within the real world. Some of these developing adults seek togetherness in extreme ways to become some digital archetype they had been misled into wanting. This volatility provides a nidus for discrete gun violence and is often difficult to predict. Technology has provided an uncontrollable sandbox in which pliable minds may be misguided. Tech should be viewed as any other vice, only in moderation.
Oh, no. Renewal of the heart and mind is essential. I’m not sure but my son knew technology took over sometime before covid19 got it’s official appearance in the U.S. News. We need to give our youth more credit and believe technology hasn’t won over common sense. Just my humble oppinion as a parent.