as "connectivity" becomes ubiquitous, it's interesting to watch society transcend traditions and the boundaries of geographic cultures. what about the modern age causes the distancing of immediate community? i have several theories.

smartphones are a time and dopamine sink. many (myself included) spend much more time staring into the literal void than they care to admit. this breaks us out of our physical lives and leaves us with less time to do other things, things which will provide us with less dopamine when we do them. this one is easy: do your best to avoid being on your phone for unproductive activity. a computer is better to interact with than a smartphone because it does things more productively, allowing quicker completion of tasks or desires.

the internet provides us with the ability to locate people more similar to us than may be possible without the internet. if you lived in rural idaho in 1990, you may have struggled to find a friend who listened to techno, if you were even lucky enough to be exposed to it. now one can get online and start talking about it with someone wherever they can point their cursor. we may find a "closer" friend, who holds our own views, or we may have our mind expanded by somebody who has different experiences from a different part of the world. while i encourage and practice this, it results in a lack of time, effort, and desire to communicate with the people physically close to us, who (outside of the sharing of internet content) have a more direct impact on the trajectory of our lives. many in the modern day no longer tend to make friends in their workplace or place of worship (if they have any connection to such at all). instead, they are found on chat services, through hours of searching for the "right" people. we may not have even attempted to befriend those in our physical lives simply because they don't fit a mold we made up. fewer positive connections in an individual's physical life reinforce the idea that it's not as important to maintain the practices which reinforce the physical connection (in-office work, religious gatherings, social hobbies, or other third places) so long as they maintain a (para)social relationship with their online friends. there are various reasons these locations are less useful and less available than they used to be but at this point it has become a snowball, where the lack of social venues (especially the closures and restrictions caused by the response to the covid-19 pandemic) results in a lack of community, resulting in a drop in the use of social venues, resulting in the further closure of them. we must begin utlizing these venues again as much as possible to avoid them being lost to monetary or policy issues and to maintain our sense of geographic culture (because these places exist where we are, for us to use). how many local businesses must fail before a town becomes empty? how many areas must ban "loitering" before people realize why all the kids stay inside?[1]

the internet provides us with feedback from people outside of our culture. this is both a positive and negative quality. it is beneficial to be knowledgeable on the world and its happenings, and to communicate with those who have different experiences than you - it cannot be understated how isolating it can feel to live in a small conceptual area of existence, no matter your physical location, and the internet allows one to experience that "other." i'm sure in some cases the information gained from internet use and the knowledge of experiences other than one's own has allowed people to find ways out of bad situations. it can be unfortunate, though, to experience lifestyles you cannot achieve through the lens of those who do, or to receive little-to-no feedback from the other users you see which appear to receive feedback to their content.

it can be even worse to receive negative feedback, or to allow yourself to be sucked into a stream of hate. there is also a lot of bad advice on the internet, posted by people who do not have the authority to give that advice. one can simply look at /r/wallstreetbets to see examples of how listening to random unknown posters can potentially ruin your life. it is up to the user to decide which information they should trust. we are at the point in time where the internet has real bearing on life, both individually and culturally. we must be aware of this and work accordingly.

generally i think it is important that we become worldly and knowledgeable, and i value curiosity, but sometimes we need to remember to point that curiosity toward the world immediately around us in order to keep real life real.