The Internet - Why Our Lives Are Now Smaller

Do you remember a time before the internet?  I am old enough to.  I remember being taught how to use it the very first time.  The trainer asked us to search “how to cook a chicken”.  I did not know then how the internet would quickly form a major part of my life, my routine.  I did not realise how it would change my life, for the better and for the worse.

Anything that I could possibly want to buy is available online.   Books, music, clothes, the food I eat.

In some ways, the internet saves us a lot of time.  You don’t need to go into a clothing store anymore.  You can choose multiple options of whatever you want and get a courier to return what you don’t want.  You want to clean your sink drain, Amazon is here for you.  You can’t be bothered to cook tonight, Just Eat will sort you out. You forget an ingredient for the meal you are cooking tonight, Deliveroo has your back.   You want to go somewhere, you open Google Maps.

The internet has made it so you could reasonably never leave your home if you didn’t want to.  Especially if you work from home.

You can be permanently entertained, forever.  Netflix, Prime, Disney Plus, Youtube.  You will never run out of things to watch.  Adverts can be a thing of the past, if you pay for the privilege.  You can connect to people from all over the world, without ever leaving your sofa.

The internet even provides some with a job now.  You can use it to purchase things and then review them.  You can game and have people watch you play.  You can spout your opinions online and have people listen to you.

The internet has given me much.  The platform I write to you on now.  Twitter, I refuse to use X, that helped me to find some like minded people and opened up my voice.

But with the good, comes the bad.

We are losing social skills.  We are losing human interactions.  We are losing our time to things that do not matter and do not affect our lives.  We lose hours doom scrolling, playing games, always searching for the next dopamine hit.  The next really interesting thing that is surely just a scroll away.

I remember my old morning routine.  I got up in the morning, had a shower, made a fresh coffee, put my makeup on and sat down on the sofa, munching on a slice of toast before I was out of the door.  Quick, easy.  Up and out of the house within 45 minutes.

Now, I sit on the sofa and check to see what is going on in the world before I start my day.  I check Facebook, Twitter, a news website.  What I guess I would consider “the necessary”.  The absolute basics.  Then I “quickly” check Reddit and suddenly thirty more minutes have disappeared, reading stories about other people’s lives.  Scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll.  So it begins.

I drag myself out of the house and catch the bus.  Instead of just quietly sitting there, maybe reading my book if I have remembered it; it is more doom scrolling, maybe playing a game on an app or for a longer journey, watching an episode of one of my shows on Netflix.  I must be entertained.

Sitting quietly, or chatting with someone is a thing of the past.  We can no longer just sit.  We check our emails, check the socials. Shop.  All while the people next to us do the same thing.  Interacting with our phones instead of each other.  We converse with the people in our phones instead of the person right in front of us.

Children’s birthday parties used to be full of games and playing and pin the tail on the donkey.  Listening to music together and dancing.  Now each child sits there, immersed in their own world on their phones.  Your “cool” status rides on how many likes you have, how many followers you have.

I remember having problems in school when I was a child.  Bullying was involved.  But back then, I could go home.  To my safe haven.  Those children were not there.  I was with my family.  There was an escape from it.

Now, there is no escape.  Those same children are now online, talking about you.  Posting about you.  The bullying actually becomes worse because people says things online that they would never to your face.  They can start a rumour about you that spreads in minutes, true or not.  There is no escape.

You can also not just be “you” anymore.  You have to have a label.  As many labels as possible.  The more you can put on your social media profiles, the better.  You are not tidy, you have OCD.  You are not a moody teenager.  You have depression, bipolar, anxiety disorder.  You have an argument with your parents.  Oh, you must have PTSD.  You are struggling with your growing body and hormones.  Maybe you aren’t a girl after all.  Maybe you are a boy.  Maybe you are both. 

Decide.  DECIDE!  Tell the world.  Tell the internet.  And once you decide, you are not allowed to go back.  You cannot change your mind.  Who you are.  Thoughts that you tweeted ten years ago which do not represent you anymore are enough to hang you.  You are not allowed to change.  The internet lasts forever.

The internet can also be used as a weapon in a different form.   That cheeky snap that you send your partner can end up being shared to everyone you know.  That video you made together, can end up on Pornhub.

Men and women have been pitted against each other like never before.  All men are this, all women are that.  How do you know?  Well I saw a video on Youtube.  I read a thread on Reddit.  Not actual interaction.

People tell you, as I have told you above, that our world has increased and been made easier by the internet.

But in fact, when you look, when you really look, our world has gotten so much smaller.  Our lives have become more insular.  We shout at the world telling them to listen to us, read our stories, watch us; but the people next to us no longer exist.

We can never go back.  Our lives are too intertwined. But there are changes we can make.    These are the promises I make to myself:

·       -  When I am with someone, my phone is away.

·       - When I am on the bus, I will read a book, not a Reddit story.

·       - When I want to go somewhere, I will take recommendations from word of mouth, not a Yelp reviewer.

·       -  I will start writing more again.  It gives me peace and enjoyment.  The numbers of who reads and who   doesn’t no longer concerns me.

·       -  If I cannot find something to watch, I will read, I will talk.  I will no longer doom scroll for an hour to     find something.

There is a hard one.  Reddit.  Of all the doom scrolling, this is the one for me.  There is no purpose to Reddit.  You read about other people’s lives and not your own.  You comment on those lives with your opinion, which is right for some but not for others.  You are barely even allowed to have an opinion on Reddit these days as it is, so why am I still there?

I no longer want to engage in things that do not bring anything into my life.   Do not add to my life and in fact, take time away from actually living my life.  I can use the internet for the good it still holds to.  I can educate myself, I can learn about new things.  There is so much out there I do not know and that information is at my fingertips.  But instead, I scroll.

This is the promise we need to make to ourselves. 

Stop. Scrolling. 

It is ok not to be entertained