Has this ever happened to you: you accidentally leave your cell phone at home, and it feels like your soul has stayed there with it? Your nerves crackle, you feel short of breath \u2013 in short, you panic. The specific reaction to a forgotten device depends on the individual, but in the end it\u2019s basically separation anxiety: you find yourself far from something that\u2019s really important to you.<\/p>\n
In today\u2019s technology-driven reality, we are seeing the emergence of this new symptom \u2013 what I call \u201canxiety of the disconnected\u201d. It may sound trite, but the phenomenon is real enough to have been studied.<\/p>\n
The Gabinete de Comunicaci\u00f3n Estrat\u00e9gica<\/a> in Mexico confirmed in a 2016 study that 25% of the country\u2019s population has felt sad or anxious upon not receiving a \u201clike\u201d on their Facebook status, or when they lose internet connection.<\/p>\n In the United States, psychological studies on the relationship between internet connectivity and anxiety<\/a> have shown that additional symptoms include headache, disturbances in sleep and strained vision.<\/p>\n Teachers see it all the time. Just recently, at the Instituto Michoacano de Ciencias de la Educaci\u00f3n<\/a>, the teachers\u2019 college where I work, one of my students started yelling, \u201cS**t! S**t!\u201d, surprising his peers with his profane outburst. \u201cI forgot my \u2026\u201d He rifled through his backpack, taking out books, papers, emptying out everything. But to no avail: the smartphone wasn\u2019t there. I could see the anxiety on his face, as if he\u2019d lost a piece of himself.<\/p>\n What is the source of the anxious feeling? Is it really related to the forgotten object? A postmodern analysis suggests otherwise.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a quick refresher on postmodernism as a concept. According to French philosopher Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Lyotard<\/a>, the postmodern world can be understand as a modern life distinguished by the losses of the \u201cbig references\u201d: myth, religion and philosophy. This represents a void experience, which we try to fill through consumerism.<\/p>\n That\u2019s when the disconnection happens, because buying doesn\u2019t satisfy us. But in fact the disconnection has already happened anyway: we are born disconnected, lost in the virtual reality that is our lives. Or at least that\u2019s what many people feel, including children, who now engage in less social play<\/a> due to digital attachments.<\/p>\n For the postmodernist, then, the real cause of anxiety upon forgetting a cell phone is not the disconnection from the digital world per se, because it has never filled the void left by the loss of big references. Rather, it\u2019s that the subject is suddenly left undefended against the terrible reality of confrontation with others.<\/p>\n Without a screen that lets me disappear into the realm of the imaginary, I must confront the other, face to face \u2013 necessitating conversation, discussion, perhaps sometimes even a fight.<\/p>\n Polish sociologist Zygmun Bauman<\/a> has said, \u201cwhat social networks create is a substitute \u2026 you can add friends or erase them, control the people with whom you interact.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s true \u2013 in real life, how do you erase someone? How can you block them, or unfriend them?<\/p>\n You can\u2019t. That\u2019s why people increasingly prefer social networks<\/a> and the life they facilitate. And if there\u2019s no virtual contact or connection, the normal psychological response is to feel anxiety, of course \u2013 not due to our distance from the virtual world, however, but because when we are disconnected, we cease to be the subjects of our own reality and are subjected to reality itself.<\/p>\n But even when we in tune with our digital social networks, we know from the testimony of psychoanalysis patients that over-reliance on technological relationships can dangerously shrink our worlds. Loneliness becomes desolation, connectivity becomes mechanicity; the subject, neglected, contracts, a condition that can increase the risk of suicide<\/a>.<\/p>\n Even if we enjoy the richness of excellent digital connectivity, it comes at the cost of poor social relations. These are, in the end, a critical part of human existence.<\/p>\n So based on the psychoanalytical literature and philosophical truth, we know that the anxiety of the disconnected isn\u2019t because one feels separated from humanity. No, the anxiety comes from the opposite direction: from feeling too close to humanity, too near to the other.<\/p>\n If the subject is disconnected, they have no choice but to face their spouse, their children, their father, whomever else. It is a hard thing to confront one another using words, to dialogue, make agreements, find peace.<\/p>\n Conflict management on Facebook<\/a> differs from that required in real life, as numerous studies<\/a> have shown.<\/p>\n That anxiety you feel when you realise you\u2019ve left behind your smart phone? It isn\u2019t about the object you forgot so much as what it represents: a social function that you must now perform in person.<\/p>\n No screen to sink into, like Narcissus<\/a> drowning in his own image. No, the smartphone-less subject must engage, reposition themselves vis-a-vis the other \u2013 a real, living, breathing human being that dreams, desires and conspires, and whom she cannot erase nor often even choose.<\/p>\n And that, indeed, is an anxiety-producing fact.<\/p>\n Abraham Mart\u00ednez Gonz\u00e1lez<\/a>, Professor of Psychology, Instituto Michoacano de Ciencias de la Educaci\u00f3n<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n This article was originally published on The Conversation<\/a><\/strong>. Read the original article<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n People feel helpless when they are disconnected from the digital world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":220,"featured_media":90987,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_enabled":true,"_sma_x_custom_text":"","_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2226],"tags":[23081,17704,14064,8299],"class_list":["post-109471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","tag-connected","tag-conversation","tag-digital","tag-mobile"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/220"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109471"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":109473,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109471\/revisions\/109473"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}I tweet, therefore I am<\/h3>\n
Adding friends and erasing them<\/h3>\n
Digital Narcissus<\/h3>\n
\nNow read:\u00a0Fibre will overtake ADSL in South Africa and this is how ISPs will be affected<\/a><\/strong><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"