Did your friend ignore a text? They must hate you, right?
Iwas in high school when Facebook launched. Months earlier I’d been frequenting the site 2go; a website where people would connect and chat with friends.
So when Facebook initially appeared, I scoffed at a platform where your college friends became digital friends. Once someone explained the website was like 2go — only you could plan parties with your friends and invite the girls from 2go— I signed up.
Though (later, much later) I became a communications major, most of my life didn’t revolve around a digital existence. The computer was for downloading music on Limewire (and just about every virus a computer could catch) or using Adobe products for assignments.
My cell phone only received calls from my closest contacts and sending a text message was downright absurd. You had to smash the number 7 four different times just to create an “S.” No one had time for that madness.
Looking back at my college career, I often marvel at the depth of my former relationships as opposed to the current climate of our culture. My roommates and I would eat lunch on campus several times a week though we’d never met one another before moving into our rooms. Checking a phone never seemed to be what we obsessed over. More often than not, we were checking the clock to ensure we hadn’t missed class because of ongoing conversations.
In today’s era however, most of us receive several hundred text messages a day, but opt not to call and have a two minute conversation that would save us hours of texting. When we’re unavailable, friends and loved ones assume we died in a car wreck, or are purposefully ignoring them because we’re upset.
We can’t even drive a car without checking to see what’s going on in our social lives once we get a notification. Who texted? Who posted? Who liked? Who responded?
As I’ve watched the mental health crisis soar to new heights — with technology helping Prometheus bring the fire that both warms and scorches — I’ve noticed something far more insidious. Most of our relationships and so-called friendships have grown codependent or clingy, and I’m willing to bet yours have too.
Growing Sicker Together
Once upon a time, I measured the depth of friendships by the conversations we had over a meal or time spent together. These days, the question indicative of the depth of a relationship is when I’m asked whether I saw a post, tweet, or photo.
We now believe the strength of our relationship revolves around how much time we spend stalking our online “friend’s” persona. If we missed the subsequent post (or multiple posts) then we must not care.
Then there’s the text message conundrum. Sometimes you get text messages in the middle of events or places where you shouldn’t be looking at a phone. But you can’t help yourself, so you swipe, realize it’s not an emergency, and forget to respond. After a few hours (or days in my case), this leaves the other person wondering if you’re ignoring them or angry. Other times you’ll be in the shower and won’t answer. Perhaps you’re on vacation; maybe at church.
The assumption, however, is that we should all be tethered to the new leash in our pockets. Now that we consider an actual a phone call more of an urgency, when you don’t answer, people assume you’re dead or ignoring them. No one even wonders if you’re taking some solitude to free yourself from the clutches of your new master.
They assume you’re just as addicted — aren’t we all?
From this new found obsession with notifications determining our self worth, we grow increasingly codependent. While that noun tends to conjure extreme circumstances, a friend once shared that “Codependency is simply two people growing sicker together.”
Given the way we expect others to revolve around our phone calls, posts, and text messages, we can now label most of society doomed to this sick cycle. The world revolves around our needs and we come off like the stage three clinger girlfriend in every teen movie, thus manipulating people to provide the environment we need — and they acquiesce.
The problem with our new clinginess and tech obsession, is that our outlook on life becomes selfish and one-sided. Our relationships become about meeting our needs, which is the antithesis of friendship. For instance, the minute outside forces or people shift their attention off us, we feel threatened and try to shift the focus back toward us.
We then can’t have healthy relationships because we’ll always be the point. My needs. My wants. My hurts. My accomplishments. My desires. Me. Me. Me. Every relationship, every friendship, every connection will implode. It won’t matter how many people we surround ourselves with because no one will ever be able to give us what we need or want when we’re the point.
And our phones? They continue to feed that self centered belief into an endless void culminating in self-loathing.