Maybe it's just me, but this criticism of the disconnectedness caused by modern society and technology seems really banal and played-out. Of course it's annoying when people you are hanging out with are constantly checking their phones and seem completely disengaged from the present company. But is that really unique to this moment in technology? Sure, smartphones and tablets enable a level of being always plugged into everything that didn't exist before, but in the past someone might have been disengaged because he/she was daydreaming or thinking about what he/she would write if in constant contact with someone remote.
If anything, I think the biggest interpersonal impact of new technologies does not stem primarily from their social purposes (e.g. texting friends or checking in somewhere on Facebook). Instead, I think it comes from the fact that new technology has enabled many employers to expect employees to be "on call" 24/7. E-mail from a client or boss could come at any time, which makes ignoring that phone buzzing in your pocket impossible. Even if, upon investigating the buzzing phone, it turns out to be a purely social contact, the fact that it could have been work-related makes it hard to be completely unplugged or unaware of incoming messages. As a result, many people have become conditioned to having a phone or tablet in hand at all times, which then ups the temptation to stay constantly engaged in Words With Friends or Angry Birds or the latest celebrity tweet war.
In my mind what has changed is not our level of distraction (at least not to a huge degree) but rather the means by which we are distracted. All that means is that everyone should find people with whom they can truly engage. In other words, don't hang out with people who act like they don't want to be hanging out. The best conversations are not the ones that stem from when you have intentionally left your phone behind; they are the ones that you are fully devoted to and rapt by even if you know your phone is ringing.
I've written enough already but all of that is without even going into the ways that new technologies and media can enable new types of social relationships. Are these social relationship different? Yes. Does that mean they are necessarily worse or less valuable? No. Maybe we'll get into some longreads that address this topic another time. Until then, read this piece by Pico Iyer and let me know what you think!
"The Joy of Quiet" by Pico Iyer
Published in the New York Times, December 29, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/opinion/sunday/the-joy-of-quiet.html?_r=1&ref=general&src=me&pagewanted=all
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