I
By Ayushi Madan
magine being in a living room,
witnessing a family spending some
time together. It’s a spacious, well
lit room-sofa sets, side tables,
coffee tables, rugs and throws, and all
the luxurious comforts of the modern
living. You would imagine they are
catching up, possibly having a few
drinks together, or perhaps playing a
game of cards. No, they are not. You
can’t hear a word, even though they
are all there. Phone, earphones, tabs,
laptops- everyone has their own choice
of gadget, shooting down any possibility
of real conversation.
Does this look and feel familiar to you?
Have you ever gone to a restaurant
and been taken in by the urge to
share some selfies on snapchat? Or
mid conversation, has instagram ever
lured you to take a plunge for a few
seemingly brief moments (which were
probably extremely long for the person
waiting for you to come back to the
conversation). Perhaps you were the
person waiting for a friend to come
back to your conversation.
Social Isolation in a digitally
connected world!
44
Volume 4 | Issue 1 | January-March 2019
Gadgets, and gadgets with wifi are the
new basic needs. We just cannot do
without them and we are addicted to
them. Here is the proof. Detox apps on
your phones, to keep you away from
your phone is the new irony now-a-
days. The message is clear- the one
who oppresses us, holds the power and
means to free us, thereby still oppressing
us. We are not enough for ourselves!
They generally have a quintessential
tree graphic, or something ‘soothing’
as its cover picture. It compels us to
think about what we are buying into, as
consumers, and what is the kind of world
that we are constructing for ourselves.
We want to access a meditative space in
ourselves, using an application on our
phone as the ‘environment’.
We also live in an economy, where
retreats are the new consumables.
There are more and more retreats and
workshops coming up which cater to
the needs of ‘being with yourself ’ and
‘being with nature’. We are invited into
‘other worlds’, where our mundane, fast
paced, stressful, clamorous and noisy
world can’t get to us. What is it that we
are running away from?
Two opposing, contradictory worlds
are being created by us. And we want
to be part of both. Oscillating between
different time-scapes.
I then ask you, what makes our digital
media so indispensable? When did
the need for our gadgets arise? What
do they fulfill for us in our personal
lives? For some of us, they have always
been part of our lives, however, some
of us have acquired the taste, and
now become completely or partially
dependent. They are the new normal
because they make entertainment
easy, they make time move faster. They
make passing time easy for us, because
now we are not required to engage
with material inside of us, we are not
required to make our real selves visible
to real people outside of our phones.
We can continue to portray a fragment
of ourselves, choose for how long, and
in what proportion we would do so. We