Soon we won’t have a choice

On rethinking our relationship with the internet

Photo by Sergey Zolkin on Unsplash

I deleted my Twitter and YouTube account. Though a rash decision in the moment I mulled over the possibility for years.

I always felt I had to get off of social media before it was “too late”. I’ve had concerns about the internet -particularly social media, since I was first exposed to it. Even as a pre-internet child I worried about the effects of television on my psyche, my soul. These experiences served as escapism, the internet and social media bringing us deeper into these alternative worlds than tv ever could.

Online you could bring yourself.

But there was still separation.

I was still in-touch with my non internet self.

And in the world around me there were still many —both of the older and younger generations that weren’t so hooked, that made me believe grounding was still possible. That I could tap out of cyber world at any time and there would still be something there.

That is becoming less and less true. The kids are more addicted to their phones than we are (my millennial generation) and our parent’s generation watches videos on YouTube with the same familiarity they flick on their favorite tv shows.

But that’s not so bad. We still log off, we still put our phones to rest, we still understand that the virtual world isn’t the same as the real world —we still have a concept of the ‘real world’.

But this won’t last forever, not if the tides are in the favor of social media handlers. They want the ‘real world’ and ‘cyber world’ to be one and the same, they want everyone of every generation to buy in to their platforms. They want the world to fall under their dominion

This is when I fear it will be too late.

When I was about 23 I met a woman who told me that she didn’t have an email because she didn’t want to be tracked. She made her case, I had no counterargument. Yet I couldn’t help but think, ‘that’s crazy’.

The same is said for those without social media now.

The same will be said for those without a web3 profile and Avr glasses in the future. There’s always a tipping point when the new becomes the norm. When no matter how convincing the arguments are against our new mediums, people will shake their heads in rejection but are unable to say more than ‘that’s crazy’.

I think our attachment to the internet has already gone too far. Waking up to notifications and falling asleep to YouTube is already too far. To know that is a gift, it’s when we don’t realize that anymore then we should truly worry. When we not only spend all our time on the net and perhaps later on in the net, and see no issue, feel no concern, have no self-reflection, and feel no self-doubt.

That is what frightens me the most; the point of no return.