What will they have to lose?
Filler #1 Things Lost To Excessive Social Media Usage
I am currently engrossed in the world of The God of Small (published in 1997), the literary sensation by Arundhati Roy. In it there is a character, a somewhat unlikeable character thus far, Navomi Ipe nicknamed Baby Kochamma. Her likeability, however, is beside the point. Baby Kochamma attends the University of Rochester in America to study for a diploma in Ornamental Gardening and returns to her family's home in Ayemenem, India upon completing her studies. When she returns her father gives her control of their garden and Baby Kochamma is excellent at tending to it as “she raised a fierce, bitter garden that people came all the way from Kottayam to see.”
The garden has become a lush wonder with beautiful, exotic and rare flowers because Baby Kochamma has dedicated her time, care and knowledge to it for more than 50 years. Then things change when she installs a dish antenna and swaps out her time tending to her garden to consume television. The garden is left abandoned. Baby Kochamma spends less time outside and the fear ignited by what she sees on television “the BBC famines and Television wars” inspires a paranoid fear of the world that keeps her locked in the house. “She kept her doors and widows locked, unless she was using them.” Baby Kochama has not only abandoned her garden, but has also abandoned the outside, abandoned her freedom, and to a degree any faith in humanity.
“And so, while her ornamental garden wilted and died Baby Kochamma followed American NBA league games, one-day cricket and all the Grand Slam tennis tournaments. On weekdays she watched The Bold and The Beautiful and Santa Barbara, where brittle blondes with lipstick and hairstyles rigid with spray seduced androids and defended their sexual empires.”
While searching for mainstream successful authors within a specific age range without social media, I came across an interview of Zadie Smith with 92nd Street Y in which she says about social media platforms: “How many more things do they have to take from you before it’s enough?” In this, she also lists a few things that society has lost to social media such as privacy, the ability to concentrate, time, and how social media has had an impact on democracy and free will.
Five Things I Have Lost To Social Media:
Stillness and staying with a thought for a while. Mulling over stuff, questioning, and forming an opinion.
Alonnesness without the need to fill it with some sort of connectedness: scrolling through the feed, commenting, dm’ing, reacting, etc.
Ability to read for long periods of time or even use the in-between time to read like I would Wattpad stories I had no business devouring as a teenager under the desk in class and on the bus home.
Time, so much time for hobbies and acquiring new ones and abandoning them along the way to pick new ones up.
Decent conversation. I find that in the past three years or so, I suck more and more at conversation, especially without using popularised lingo. I struggle with embracing awkward silences and pauses, hardly hesitating to pull out my phone for safety when such a moment arises.
It's funny because social media exposes us to so much, letting us in on corners of the world we cannot physically reach yet also takes so much from us. The promise of connectedness it offers also feels like an illusion.
When I see my below 5-year old nephews with tablets or their parents’ phones in their hands, eyes glued to the screen on TikTok and YouTube kids blaring loudly, I wonder what they will have to lose. Will they have anything to map pre-digital overconsumption or will that be their beginning and norm? I can say I lost my ability to concentrate for long periods of time and with it my ability to sit still reading books, will they have stuff to look back on and reflect on how they do those things less and less due to more and more time online? What will those younger and still being born have to lose? What have you lost? In a few years from now, what will you have to lose?
“It happened overnight. Blondes, wars, famines, football, sex, music, coups d’etat - they all arrived on the same train. They unpacked together.”
Arundhati Roy
Thank you for the reminder to read once again, The God of small things.