The place of screens in young people’s lives inspires passions. Experts regularly take to the media front and blame digital capitalism for causing a global epidemic of sedentary lifestyles. But this trap began to loom long before this technology boom.
Published at 1:29 am. Updated at 6:00 am.
Not so long ago, the proof of this was the feet that marked the path of kinship and friendship. We traveled to see those we loved. Then the telephone came along and offered us the opportunity to avoid these visits. Now you could just pick up the phone and dial the person’s number. You still had to be mobile to answer landline calls. To save you the somewhat tedious journey to the device, the industry invented the cordless telephone before moving on to the portable model. We are now glued to our phones.
The same scenario was applied to the arrival of television. First you had to get your butt off the sofa to turn it on, change the channel or point the antenna on the roof. Another energy-consuming obligation that industry will relieve us of with the invention of the remote control and the cable. We could sit there, change positions and watch people live on the screen.
The introduction of computers, tablets, smartphones, the Internet and digital platforms will allow us to take another step: fulfilling our desire to interact with screens and fulfilling another need of the extremely social animal human beings. Equipped with these new possibilities, we could interact with people on screens, make friends, build a social network and even find a partner without leaving our homes.
Soon we’ll be walking around London in the morning, visiting the Louvre in the afternoon, going deep-sea fishing in the evening, and then spending a hot night in augmented reality with a partner… without leaving the couch!
Plus, there’s no need to go outside and play because all the dopamine games in the world are offered online for Homo pantouflarus. After the roaring twenties, we plunge into the gentle twenties. Goodbye, the beautiful mobility of yesterday!
After working to save us from moving with the advent of artificial intelligence, digital capitalism is now working to put our very energy-intensive brains into sleep mode. Why bother when you can ask Siri, Alexa and other digital slaves to do the work? With smart homes, smartphones, smart cars, smart refrigerators, smart watches, and all the other discoveries coming, the time of great neural calm seems very near. It will potentially be the beginning of regressive brain development, as any organ or muscle without work or function risks atrophy. What would be ironic would be this return to the original stupidity that our artificial intelligence gave rise to.
All of these innovations are part of a mercantile logic. We seek to physically separate people to better bind them to consumption, much as large predators work to disperse a herd to make its individuals more vulnerable. The COVID-19 pandemic has given these giants an unexpected opportunity to convince us to replace office spaces with remote work and abandon malls, restaurants and even grocery stores in favor of delivery services. We bet that if this trend continues, they will work to convince us to rely heavily on distance learning and telemedicine.
Why stop halfway when the potential is still so enormous? The capitalist economy has long understood that the desire to achieve greater comfort through less effort is deeply rooted in human nature.
The neuroscientist Sébastien Bohler addressed this topic in his book “The Human Bug”. He locates this peculiarity in the striatum. It is also this ancient brain structure, stimulated by dopamine, that makes the web giants, expertly advised by neuroscientists, cheer with likes, shares, comments, number of views, successful actions or completed levels in a game. If evolution has given us that consumerism has understood that we can put it advantageously at the service of the economy by offering more and more possibilities and technologies that serve this law of least effort.
One thing is certain: this path we are taking together is marked by psychological problems. Being locked up has shown us very clearly that living in isolation is not conducive to our mental balance. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, mental health issues have now been widely documented. So if only social networks are left to replace the benefits of real human encounters and relationships, mental health in our societies will decline dramatically. The more machines isolate us, the more brains become confused and lines form in front of these therapists’ offices. This is already the case.
The moral of my story is: “If your very human teenager has empathy and listening skills, tell him that mental health studies in our universities are the sector of the future.” Furthermore, no artificial intelligence will be able to replace these specialists. »