Is human connection a right or a privilege? We are and have always been a social species, and though the communicative mediums have changes throughout the course of history, one thing has remained: humans are not built to survive alone. We rely on community and cooperation to adapt and thrive.
Smartphone technology and the proliferation of social media has raised concerns for parents and educators since the first iPhone flew off of the shelves:
* Will our kids lose the ability to talk to each other in person?
* Will too much screen time rot their brain, or rob them of creativity?
* Will access to technology widen the gap between the rich and poor?
That last question is particularly troublesome. The socio-economic gap is already too wide, and a major concern is that rich kids will have disproportionate access to these new tools, exacerbating their advantage.
But suddenly a new, much more urgent question emerges:
Do rich kids have disproportionate access to human connection?
What at first might seem a silly question is quite serious. Nellie Bowles recently wrote a brilliant piece in the NY Times examining the difference in how affluent and poor families are handling the technology crisis. She writes:
It wasn’t long ago that the worry was that rich students would have access to the internet earlier, gaining tech skills and creating a digital divide. … But now, as Silicon Valley’s parents increasingly panic over the impact screens have on their children and move toward screen-free lifestyles, worries over a new digital divide are rising. It could happen that the children of poorer and middle-class parents will be raised by screens, while the children of Silicon Valley’s elite will be going back to wooden toys and the luxury of human interaction.
Whoa. When did human interaction become a privilege?
A recent Cigna study concluded that loneliness has reached epidemic levels, now as threatening to mental and physical wellbeing as smoking 15 cigarettes per day, and that those who report the lowest levels of loneliness are those with frequent, meaningful, in-person interaction.
Human connection is a right, not a privilege. We need to be very careful that poor and middle class kids don’t lose that right as a byproduct of technological advancement.
Everyone deserves to feel heard, understood, and valued. Lose that, and we lose everything.
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