Humanity Trapped in The Matrix by COVID-19
If I was an evil Artificial Intelligence genius, this is exactly where I would want humans to be — scared to death, glued to their screens.
With the COVID-19 global lockdown, this is where humanity found itself in 2020. Billions of us trapped in quarantine inside our homes and apartments, all real-life events cancelled, with screens our only option for work, education, communication, and entertainment.
A perfect setup for AI-driven digital media that was fiercely competing for limited human attention with all it’s got — apps, social media, news, video games — across multiple screens.
Not surprisingly, some humans have started to notice that Facebook and YouTube were kind of addictive and thus detrimental to their productivity, attention and relationships. Many were actively building better digital boundaries — working, socializing, exercising, spending time in the real world with real people.
Away from addictive screens.
And then suddenly real world was no longer an option.
Billions of humans became slaves to their screens overnight. How convenient for the data mining industry.
Fear! Uncertainty! People feel the desperate need to be informed! Why? To get some sense of control over our lives.
But the more we read the news, the more desperate and depressed we become.
Because what is on the news is what has always been on the news — death and destruction. That’s what sells. The shock value. As the saying goes:
“If it bleeds, it leads”.
News outlets were not writing stories about the majority of people who recovered from the coronavirus. That’s boring, there is no drama in it. “I felt awful for a few days, now I am feeling so much better”, “I was symptom-free and did not even know I had the virus” — there is nothing interesting here. No, the news outlets are writing about those that died. Now that will get — and keep — the viewers’ attention, because people would hang on every word to prevent the same fate happening to them.
And throwing around the blame for the crisis on various politicians builds more outrage in the trapped and desperate humans, more “Can you believe what they wrote?!” shares, comments, forwards, spitting matches. More ways to keep eyes on the screen. More data to collect and sell. How perfect.
Starved of real human connection, humans turn to social media to find solace, friendships and comfort. Except, even before the crisis, too much social media was associated with depression . In quarantine, social media for some was the only socializing they could do beyond their immediate family.
If you thought 3 hours of Facebook per day was bad, can you imagine the unhealthy levels social media use has reached because of COVID?
Social media frenzy spreads more panic than comfort. It magnifies anxiety and depression everyone is already struggling with.
Scams, sensations, conspiracy theories, and rumors spread way faster than legitimate scientific information. It’s not making things better, it’s making them worse.
Why? Because attention in the world of digital media translates to money. And attention thrives on negativity bias that we humans have. We naturally pay more attention to the negative, because our brains are scanning the environment for danger. That’s our evolutionary biology.
Since attention is what social media is optimized for, it is more likely that you see something on your news feed that would make you panic, than something that would make you calm.
If you are scared, you will keep your eyes glued to that screen, giving the platform your full attention — and your data for sale. Again, perfect — for them. As for us, we’d be better off following the advice our kids’ school counselor gave to the parents to protect children’s mental health:
Turn off the news.
Oh yes — KIDS! AT HOME! ALL THE TIME! We love them, but they are worse than any virus! With parents trying to work remotely full-time, and supervise kids’ Google classroom education at the same time?!
Homeschooling several kids while simultaneously being on a conference call is humanly impossible.
It’s a circus. It’s a screaming hell.
Nothing gets done, and everyone hates each other. Family relationships become collateral damage.
The only pathway to parental peace is…. screens, of course.
When the iPads and phones and chromebooks and game consoles are distributed, exhausted parents can finally breathe easy. It’s quiet. They can get things done. They can relax.
How convenient for the video gaming industry.
They have a captive audience with malleable young brains to turn into digital addicts for life.
What happened to the “under 2 hours a day” screen time guidelines experts have been recommending to us for years? With the arrival of the virus, they were laughable.
Gone with all the screen alternatives we used to enjoy and take for granted: the school bus that reliably took kids to school for the blissful 7 hours every day, the sports practices, and games, and music, and art, and gymnastics, and dance, and swimming, and the million things we did for our kids to raise them as well-rounded human beings.
Gone were the screen-free family vacations we planned and booked and were forced to cancel. Gone were the get-togethers with friends and family. Gone were the day trips to farms and museums and beaches. Even hikes were forbidden at some point, for God’s sake! It turns out the government has the power to shut down nature itself. Who would have thought.
It almost seems the tech industry conspired with the government to create this perfect environment for digital addiction. We may be physically safe, but mentally we are falling apart.
What could we do?! When we were virtually imprisoned in our own homes and so much had been taken from us, what was left to save our kids’ brains from screen-time overdose? Options were limited, but we have established set routines to keep our sanity.
It was far from perfect, it was tons of work, it was exhausting, but it sort of worked. Mom and dad did not get much accomplished, but with the exception of school work we were able to keep 3 kids away from screens for most of their waking hours.
Because we firmly believe that a child’s brain is designed to develop in the real world, not in the attention-destroying, anxiety-producing, humanity-degrading artificial virtual world on the screen.
So we held onto our screen time rules even in the COVID-19 lockdown. And survived — if only just barely.
We were concerned about summer the most. As quarantine continued, we had to get a lot more creative — and patient — to make up for the absence of camps, vacations, and days on the beach. We have crossed that bridge with a family road trip and lots of hiking.
With schools and activities reopening it’s a lot easier now. The lockdown routines are on standby — we hope we will not need them again. Which might be wishful thinking, but we like to be optimistic. Whatever the future holds, sooner or later life will return to normal. Kids will go back to the real world, hopefully without being turned into the digital zombies unprepared to live and thrive in it.
Because the real danger kids are facing from this virus is not to their physical, but to their mental health.
Coronavirus might make them sick for a few days, but they will recover — scientists tell us this virus is rarely dangerous for children. However, once a young brain gets rewired with a behavioral addiction of screen time overuse, that will negatively affect the rest of their lives.
Not on my watch.
Source: Stream of consciousness
TechDetox Mom has found her children on the receiving end of addictive technology and decided to fight back.
Her research on the relationship between technology and psychology seeks to reveal how digital behavior manipulation affects human wellbeing.
She writes on her blog TechDetoxBox.com to find solutions to protect our families and reclaim our humanity.
