Zero Gravity

We all know that every object in space exerts a gravitational pull on every other – our Earth, the moon, you and I and so on. It holds together entire galaxies and keeps us physically grounded. Without it the human race would cease to exist, and with it we are able to inhabit and experience this beautiful Earth. An Earth that has striking landscapes, enchanting city skylines and more to see and do to last hundreds of thousands of lifetimes. As I type these words, I can’t help but reflect upon my own experience. How we experience the world today is so drastically different than it was just a few short years ago. I am not going to lie, I am feeling disturbed after reading an expose from the Washington Post whereby a former Facebook CEO divulges intimate secrets that tech companies like Facebook don’t want the public to know. From 2007 to 2011 Chamath Palihapitiya worked as the vice president for user growth at Facebook. In an interview with Amy Wang, he is open and candid about the work he carried out while at Facebook. “It literally is a point now where I think we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works. That is truly where we are,” he said. “The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works: no civil discourse, no cooperation, misinformation, mistruth. And it’s not an American problem. This is not about Russian ads. This is a global problem.”

Yes, with the emergence of the smartphone, our experience has changed. More often than we want to admit, we choose to experience life through a five inch by three inch screen. We seem to have the world literally at our fingertips with apps that connect us with people across the globe and provide us with boundless information. However, something just doesn’t sit right. This weekend, while at our community’s annual Apple Harvest Festival, it wasn’t the extremely large, spinning thrill-ride appropriately named “Zero Gravity” that caught my attention with it’s flashing lights and spinning hunk of metal. Instead, it was what was going on inside the ride. One by one as the rotor spun, I watched the teen riders pass – more than half of them with their eyes glued to their smartphones. Side by side with their friends, experiencing the same thrilling ride together, yet living in a world of their own confined by their 3 inch by five inch screens. Some of them clearly “snapping”, others facetiming, and others who just seemed like they were scrolling through a newsfeed. As I watched, my husband turned to me and asked me why I looked so stressed. I quickly snapped out of my pensive moment, but I keep playing the scene over and over in my mind. I remember cool autumn nights with my friends as a teen riding thrill rides such as these together – holding hands, screaming and laughing with one another, feeling so connected with them through our experience. What could be more interesting in the 3 x 5 screen-world than the joy evoked from a shared experience among friends?? Were these kids bored even on a ride? Perhaps it’s the allure of the next big thing – the next up and coming thing that will appear at the top of their feed with its addictive “reverse chronological” design. According to Clive Thompson, “social media is designed to keep us trapped in the present and devoid of history.” We’re always focused on what’s next instead of spending a concerted amount of time focused around one thing. In his article titled, “Social media is keeping us stuck in the moment”, Thompson makes a valid point. “Some of society’s biggest problems, such as global warming, require careful long-term planning; we can’t tackle them if we’re being dragged in 20 directions every hour by shiny objects and oven-fresh hot takes.”

The kids on the ride remain at the forefront of my mind even days later. As I think about my own children and what I want for them out of this life, my mind wanders back to the striking landscapes and enchanting city skylines I imagined at the beginning of this post. I want them to see all of them and experience them with their own two eyes and own two feet. I want them to experience these things just to experience them, not for the disturbed reward-system of likes and comments on social media. I want raw and unbounded experience for them, confined only by all the possibilities they can imagine.