The App Generation (12 page)

In many ways, today's social interactions bear markings of the app. Apps exist to maximize convenience, speed, and efficiency. When you want something, it's there for your immediate use. When you're done with it, switch it off (provided you disable the push notifications that will otherwise pop up unsolicited, alerting you to new content). If you tire of an app's wares, delete it. Apps are under our control (though our increasing dependency on them places us in danger of coming under their control); they're available around the clock and seemingly risk free. Much the same could be said of the way today's youth communicate through digital media technologies.

Young people's social interactions may look quite different today than they did twenty years ago. What is less clear is whether this change in how relationships are conducted has translated into a change in the quality of these relationships. Are the social networks of today's youth larger or smaller, deeper or shallower, than predigital youth? Are their interpersonal relationships more or less authentic, supportive, and
fulfilling? As we contemplate these questions, Erik Erikson, introduced in
chapter 3
, is ever in our mind. The psychoanalyst's model of human development has as the central task of young adulthood the formation of deep, long-term relationships with others; in their absence, feelings of isolation and disconnection supervene. In the latter case it becomes more difficult to negotiate subsequent challenges in life, such as raising a family and launching a successful work life.

To compare the size of Americans' core discussion networks, scholars and journalists invariably point to a sociological study that used data from the General Social Survey (GSS)—an annual survey of Americans' lifestyle choices, values, and beliefs—in 1985 and 2004.
¹¹
The researchers were interested in whether the number of close interpersonal relationships—often called strong ties—enjoyed by Americans had grown or shrunk over this twenty-year period. They looked at responses to the following question: “From time to time, most people discuss
important matters
with other people. Looking back over the last six months—who are the
people
with whom you discussed matters important to you?” In addition to changes in the size of core discussion networks, the researchers were also interested in whether the makeup of these networks had shifted in the last twenty years. Fortunately, the GSS also asks respondents about the demographic characteristics and the
nature of their connection (for example, Spouse, Parent, Sibling, Co-Worker) to each discussion partner.

The results are dramatic. In 1985, the average number of discussion partners reported by Americans was 2.94. By 2004, this number had fallen to 2.08, a decline of nearly one person (or, otherwise put, a shrinkage of one third in the ambit of one's discussion circle). The researchers also found that the makeup of core discussion networks had shifted from non-family ties—the sort formed in neighborhood and community contexts—to family-based relationships, especially spouses. Moreover, the number of people reporting that they talk to
no one
about matters they consider important to them rose from 10 percent in 1985 to 25 percent in 2004.

At the same time, there's been a parallel trend toward decreasing trust in others. Since the last quarter of the twentieth century, Americans have become less and less trusting of their fellow citizens and democratic institutions.
¹²
In 1972, 46 percent of respondents to the GSS agreed with the statement that “most people can be trusted.” By 2008, a mere 33 percent of respondents agreed. This dramatic downturn in trusting dispositions has important implications for intimacy and social isolation. If you don't trust that people are playing by the rules, you're less likely to open yourself up to them and become close.

The findings from our analysis of high school students' creative writing and artwork over the last twenty years suggest that youth have also been affected by the trend toward social isolation. Art that features isolation or solitude imagery increased
from 15 percent of the artwork from the early 1990s to 25 percent of artwork from the late 2000s. With respect to our creative writing analysis, peers are more frequently present in the recent stories but are also more frequently mentioned in relation to a character's isolation. Specifically, 76 percent of the stories from the early 1990s include no mention or only minimal mention of peers, whereas peers are featured prominently in the majority (60 percent) of the later stories. However, in approximately one third of these later stories, the mention of peers relates directly to a character's isolation, such as a character fantasizing about having friends to play with in the mud or a character with a notable lack of friends (even though the character may be around “peers”).

The social isolation trends detected in the General Social Survey have been highlighted in books like
Alone Together
and
The Lonely American,
as well as in feature magazine articles like “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?” and “Are Social Networks Messing with Your Head?” These various texts make the case that Americans have become increasingly lonely and socially isolated.
¹³
As some of these titles suggest, the blame for this disturbing trend is placed largely at the feet of new media technologies like cell phones, Facebook, Twitter, and email. Indeed, some researchers have found that young people
who spend more time with their digital devices experience less social success.
¹⁴

The connection between social isolation and social media isn't obvious. Indeed, it sounds counterintuitive. How can it be that technology designed to connect people may actually be making them feel
less
connected? To puzzle through this apparent paradox, let's consider Molly's experiences with Facebook. During her junior year in high school, Molly decided to deactivate her Facebook profile. She had come to resent feeling pressure to keep abreast of the constant activity of her peers there. “Having Facebook, you just feel like you have to go on it or else you're going to miss something, or if someone writes on your wall you don't want to wait two or three days to reply. So it just feels like you constantly have to be going on.” Visiting Facebook also made Molly feel “out of it” when she saw classmates tagging and commenting on each other's “muploads” (pictures taken and uploaded via mobile phone). The pictures and the flurry of comments attached to them painted a picture of a tight-knit group of friends who seemed to be having a lot more fun than Molly night and day. The contrast between this external parade of happiness and the ups and downs of her internal psychic life left her feeling as though she somehow didn't measure up.

Molly's not alone in this feeling. In one study involving college students, researchers identified a connection between respondents' Facebook use and their perceptions of other people's relative happiness.
¹⁵
Students who had used Facebook for a longer time and those who spent more time each week on
the site tended to agree more that others were happier. In addition, students who included more people whom they didn't personally know as their Facebook “friends” agreed more that others had better lives. So, one possibility is that social media platforms like Facebook make us feel lonely because they create the impression that our “friends” are hanging out with a greater number of more exciting people and having more fun than we are. We've also heard from young people that they spend hours looking at the achievements of peers whom they know only through Facebook and that this voyeuristic activity makes them feel both competitive and inadequate.

Sherry Turkle offers another explanation. Though apps allow us to perform a multitude of operations, they may not be well suited to support the kind of deep connection that sustains and nourishes relationships. By necessity, 140-character messages, the maximum on Twitter, must be stripped down to their essentials (much as apps streamline their content in order to maximize efficiency and speed). To be sure, one can infuse a short message with considerable wit and innuendo (that's the perennial appeal of haiku), but it's next to impossible for discussion partners to communicate and respond to each other's complex feelings in this way.

Turkle also notes that we may deliberately avoid deep communications through text, aware as we are of the fleeting nature of our tweets, texts, and, in the extreme, self-destructing Snapchats, as well as our suspicion that the people on the other end may not be giving us their full attention. One of our study participants, seventeen-year-old William, expressed a similar
sentiment when he observed: “People usually, the first thing they are not doing is talking to you [through instant messenger]. They won't be actively talking to you. They will be browsing something on the web and every time they have, like, five minutes, they will just quickly write something to you. So, when you are talking to a person face to face, because you are having an active exchange of information, it makes what you say more meaningful.”

This sense of the superficiality of many online interactions was expressed eloquently in a
Huffington Post
blog post written by fourteen-year-old Odelia Kaly. Kaly had deleted her Facebook account a few months before writing her blog post, because, like Molly, she had come to experience Facebook as an alienating space. It made her feel depressed to see pictures of people who looked like they were always having a terrific time, a much better time than she was having. But it wasn't just that she felt inadequate when comparing her experiences with this onslaught of staged happiness and success. For Kaly, the quality of interpersonal communication on Facebook—the stream of obligatory (and perfunctory) happy birthday wishes and wall post “likes”—felt unsatisfying and inauthentic. Though deleting her Facebook account made her feel isolated from her larger peer group, it also gave her perspective on her friendships within that group. She observed, “If deleting my account taught me anything, it was how to weed out my real friends from the fake ones.”
¹⁶

An important quality of deep relationship is the vulnerability required from those involved. It's uncomfortable to
confront another person directly with one's thoughts and emotions. But taking that emotional risk is what brings us closer to others. We share the worry of scholars and citizens alike that communicating through a screen instead of face to face largely removes the need to take emotional risks in our relationships.
¹⁷
After all, it's easier to plan out what we want to say, share it from a distance, and thereby avoid having to experience the discomfort of facing another person's unfiltered and often unexpected reaction. (Apps, by the way [or, perhaps, not just by the way], are the ultimate filter.)

In our focus groups, we learned that many of today's youth consider it less intrusive to send a text rather than call someone, and it's not uncommon for them to end relationships through text message or Facebook rather than in person. Similar to this is the phenomenon of text cancellations that many of us apparently now rely on to break plans with others at the last minute.
¹⁸
Turkle contends that this sort of arm's-length way of conducting relationships ultimately empties them of true intimacy. She warns: “There is the risk that we come to see others as objects to be accessed—and only for the parts we find useful, comforting, or amusing.” This emptying out of intimacy is likely what one focus group participant had in mind when she observed tellingly: “Kids are more and more connected, but less and less
really
connected.”
¹⁹

There may be another way in which new media technologies remove the vulnerability from our interpersonal relationships and distance us from each other. In a provocative and much debated op-ed, “How to Live without Irony,” scholar
Christy Wampole observes a strong ironic sensibility among today's generation of youth.
²⁰
In her rendition, young people wear Justin Bieber T-shirts ironically, watch
Glee
ironically, and give each other birthday gifts ironically. By bathing their actions and interactions in a wash of sarcasm, young people distance themselves both from their actions and from other people. According to Wampole, the Internet supports—indeed, encourages—this ironic turn. Online, the actions of public figures are transformed instantly into derisive memes and circulated widely. The addition of a witty hashtag at the end of a tweet empties it instantly of any seriousness. This sensibility is reinforced nightly on TV—and subsequently posted, shared, and tweeted about online—by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, who wryly ridicule newscasters, politicians, and other well-known personalities. By turning everything into a joke, youth risk nothing because they make nothing of themselves vulnerable. Yet vulnerability is precisely what's needed to connect with other people in an honest and meaningful way.

Distance goes hand in hand with disruption. In every one of our focus groups, participants commented on the disruptive quality of new media technologies. The perpetual buzz of text messages and app notifications (whether friends' Facebook updates, sports scores, or breaking news) issuing from their cell phones pulls youth away from their in-person conversations. In an extreme example, Molly recalled a brunch with one of her dorm mates in which her friend spent the entire time looking down at her cell phone rather than talking to Molly. “I didn't want to just sit there, so I started playing a game on my
phone.” Incredulous, Howard asked if Molly had at least attempted to make conversation. She had, but none of the topics she offered was able to draw her friend's attention away from her phone. Not wanting to “make the moment awkward,” Molly gave up and turned to the safety of her own phone.