I guess I have given this subject thought many times over the years, being born at the beginning of the 1980’s meant I grew up before the internet, before mobile phones, before the ‘world wide web’ donned it’s net over us all. Bringing us together, they said, in fact, I don’t think we’ve ever felt so far apart. It was something I could see would change the face of society and have speculated about it much. This piece is about the impact of it all and how I theorise it may have possibly affected others.

I’m from the time of there being no computer, and one phone in the house, the landline. I hated it. It was an awful sound that cut through what was previously quiet in comparison. I always saw it as an intrusion. So moving to mobile phones was a whole new level of intrusion, and one I undertook for work purposes, but have had to have rules around that, maybe that will be another post. This one is meant to cover general changes.

Back then as kids, we also had to physically go and knock on a friends door to see if they were available to go out, possibly having to then talk to their parent first! Or you could use the dreaded landline, but then it was a definite you would talk to an adult, that was even worse. And you had to ask permission. As an adult, friends were rarely at home, so you just had vague designated meeting places. On Saturday’s you bumped into people at the market, or in the pub, the cafe or in the park. Because otherwise there was no way to know where they were. And that was ok, we didn’t need to.

As it all changed though, I paid attention, possibly having a unique position to view it from. My mother was a technophobe, she did not like the changing technology moving in and struggled with anything up from a typewriter. She bought a word processor with built in printer, and then proceeded to get me to always type her letters on it. On the other hand, my grandpa (on my fathers side), was very tech savvy. He wrote basic computer programs, taught me how to access the games through MS Dos, and he had a video phone to my great grandparents in Bournemouth. This was in 1989. The house I grew up in was very different to the house I visited once a month or so.

I have taken to technology well, incorporated it into my life like everyone else. I very quickly saw the advantage to moving onto online systems and made the speed and efficiency of my work improve. I was able to do a home learning course, set up and run my business from home and barely interact with people at all on a physical level within a few years.

And that’s where I saw a potential problem. But on the whole it was minimal, people chose to work from home. And most of those still had a social life, external activities and things to engage with. All of that keeps the brain social, functioning and gives you an outside perspective to your own thoughts. Because if we all just stayed in ‘our own little bubble’ then we wouldn’t have much to go on would we? If I had never asked many of the questions I had, I wouldn’t know, I would only be able to assume. And you know what they say about people who assume!

I sometimes give thought to if children of today had grown up in my time, they would understand where we were coming from. That’s why I can relate to people of my age group well, despite not growing up around many or having closely aged friends. But I also give thought to what I think it would be like to grow up in the ‘after time’, without the things above that had such a large impact on my development, how I gained confidence in things, learnt about social boundaries. All face to face, having to be there, feeling the fear and doing it anyway. Character building stuff they say, and afterwards I agree. But at the time it felt like a trial, and I realised that’s because it was and is meant to be. But no-one knew what I thought all the time, it was easy to hide things and yourself without really trying and I realise now what the purpose of that was. It was self-preservation. It bought me time to try and work out who I was going to be without allowing others to try and mold me into what they wanted me to be. I had a parent trying to influence me, grandparents, school, friends, society, media. It was too much to be fair. I had to work out how you filter all that crap while still taking part in society, and manage to find out who you really are. It wasn’t easy. But factor into that social media (and this is where I theorise). If I had been able to ‘create’ an online identity of my alter ego, the persona you present to others would possibly confuse or override your true identity, thus creating two personalities (at a minimum), and splitting the sense of self. Helping to create an internal discord which wouldn’t be easily reconciled and would make it harder to function in the ‘normal’ physical world. This is why I thought maybe people get ‘addicted’ to the internet and various things under that banner. Internal conflict occurs when the online self has to function in the real world which inevitably at some point, has to, but doesn’t want to. Feeler safer and more like ‘themselves’ when engaging online.

I have had my privacy invaded a few times in the before time as a young person, so I was careful as soon as online began. Knowing already that things you say and think, and certainly things you write down can be used against you, knowing people can turn on you in a second and loyalty means very little to many. They were valuable lessons and ones which I understood well before the internet came round. I was also not reminded of them constantly (other than family reminding you and people you might chose to tell), and was able to leave them behind as is normal. To move on, let go. That isn’t as easy these days. Social media appears to be geared up to keep reminding you of yesterday, last week, last year. Living in the past means you are not living in the present, and now more than ever people can dwell on things meant to be left behind.

Although I don’t do it much outside of my household now, I believe that interacting with other people is incredibly important. For many reasons, but firstly reading people and their intentions or motives. Facial expressions, tone of voice and body language had always been big ones for me, it’s taken me years to understand the subtleties and glaringly obvious of what information is being presented to me by the other person. But only through personally interacting with that person or situation. Online is a different thing altogether and am quite good at that too now, but only because I had so much experience of people in real life and learning to ‘read between the lines’ as they say. Inside that, there have been difficulties, because I didn’t know how to socialize properly for years. I was neglected as a child, kept off school at a crucial stage of development, had a dysfunctional and unpredictable home environment and was moved around a lot, without the chance to have a consistent friendship base. All of that can make for a rather strange outcome, and took years to sort out and make up for.

This is why I particularly feel for children at the moment in this continuing situation. Not being able to have friends, socialise, have anything to look forward to, and to have the rug pulled out from under you constantly, as well as have fear pumped into your life at every turn, must be quite shocking. And I know they won’t be able to assimilate it properly for quite some time. But it also forces them to engage online for an extended period during their development. Also meaning it can all be monitored, and reviewed, and recorded. Information is power as the saying goes.

Also happening at a time when they are meant to be finding themselves and discovering what it is to have your own identity, not one you superficially developed or quickly threw together and changed repeatedly because of all the messages you were given. Those types of identities don’t usually hold up to the test of time. Leading then to general identity disorders, personality disorders and anxiety and depression. But no-one really talks about that anymore because it would mean addressing the incredibly strange and strict parameters of society we now find ourselves in. Living in a parallel world of real life and online, the line of which they are always trying to blur.

(c) K Wicks