The Anti Social Century

Derek Thompson writes in The Atlantic about The Anti-Social Century.

Carrying on the thread notably started by Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone:

Phones mean that solitude is more crowded than it used to be, and crowds are more solitary. “Bright lines once separated being alone and being in a crowd,” Nicholas Carr, the author of the new book Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart, told me. “Boundaries helped us. You could be present with your friends and reflective in your downtime.” Now our social time is haunted by the possibility that something more interesting is happening somewhere else, and our downtime is contaminated by the streams and posts and texts of dozens of friends, colleagues, frenemies, strangers.

If Carr is right, modern technology’s always-open window to the outside world makes recharging much harder, leaving many people chronically depleted, a walking battery that is always stuck in the red zone. In a healthy world, people who spend lots of time alone would feel that ancient biological cue: I’m alone and sad; I should make some plans. But we live in a sideways world, where easy home entertainment, oversharing online, and stunted social skills spark a strangely popular response: I’m alone, anxious, and exhausted; thank God my plans were canceled.

— via Dare Obasanjo