Kat Tennermann

It’s interesting that living in modern, technology driven America means that we are rarely physically isolated from other people and yet the same fact can make many of us feel isolated. Maybe it’s because the Internet allows us to participate in a worldwide community but most of the time it’s a community of strangers. We can text conversations anytime and from anywhere but there are people who think that to hear a voice or see a face make for more meaningful meetings. Social media implies interaction but it allows us to do all kinds of things instantly without involving another person. We can grocery shop, bank, submit a resume and be turned down for the job.

So lack of access to others isn’t the definition of isolation but rather the feeling of being disconnected from others.  Why does it seem as though technology, the use of our devices specifically, create barriers to making connections? Sometimes it seems as if we’re communicating at arms length.  Maybe it’s not the technology itself but the way we choose to use it. Why do we use it to frame ourselves as wholly set apart? Here are two tweets from my feed that were posted from unrelated sources but within seconds of each other:

“Nathan Fielder Has People Text ‘I Haven’t Been Fully Honest With You’ to the Person They Are Dating” and the second one was “…that's the best way to respond to "WHY DON'T YOU EVER ANSWER YOUR PHONE".

When I read tweets like those I feel as if we’re intentionally trying to close ourselves off. What have we done to our sense of commonality? Are we so alienated in our own culture that we’re willing to sacrifice the thing we need most, human interaction on a personal and intimate level, to protect our sense of self? The image of an isolated soul, alone and lonely is easy to conjure up. It’s the added subtext of purposeful separateness that makes it seem so tragic.