FOMO on the unconnected/unplugged life...

The following New York Times article caught my eye this morning: Out on the Town, Always Online by John Leland.

***It is probably crucial to note the the context from which I am reading and analyzing the article.  Currently, my tenth grade class is devouring (okay, I am devouring and eagerly promoting the relevance of the book to them) Orwell's classic, 1984.  I wish we had enough copies of M.T. Anderson's dystopian novel, Feed, to pair it with, but nonetheless, 1984 certainly stands alone in its creepy correlations with our present day.  In John Leland's article, smartphones are one step away from becoming an additional body part.  (For Feed non-readers, the characters in the novel have a computer chip in their brains that basically functions as a smartphone but they don't need to type; the chip can read their minds). 

Please note the following quotes from the article:

• "Mr. Hunt and Ms. Beaudreault resumed their conversation seamlessly, as if the interruption had never happened. Neither minded the lapse in the other’s attention. Within minutes, their thumbs were busy again.  “It’s a generational thing,” Ms. Beaudreault said. “I could be out with my friends, and we’re all on our phones, still carrying on the conversation, and it’s not weird to anyone.”  For people of a certain technological proclivity, this has become the new multitasking: to live simultaneously in the physical world and in their smartphones, without missing out on either."

• On staying attentive in the physical conversation: “You’re passing in and out of consciousness, listening for the key words, the meat of the conversation, but letting the ancillary parts drift off,” he said. “You can miss important details or offend someone by not being present. 

• "Mr. Cooper, who is starting a data-collection and search site called Hyperpublic, said he did not feel FOMO (fear of missing out), in part because he did not feel left out of an event just because he was not there physically.  “I don’t think of what’s here and what’s not here as separate,” he said. “Like I’ll be out with my mom and if I look at my phone, she says I’m being anti-social. I say, ‘I’m being social, just not social with you.’ ”

• "For the couple, digital contact is not without romance. He once bought her a bicycle as a present, but instead of surprising her with the actual bicycle, he sent her a text message with a photo of it. She posted the photo on Facebook, kvelling over her surprise.  “I go look at her Facebook page and it’s like paying attention to her,” Mr. Hunt said.  Did he mean that he felt the warmth of her presence, or that he earned brownie points as a boyfriend? “That’s a good question,” he said. “I don’t know. Maybe something in between.”"

I read this article and I am frightened and depressed. Am I overreacting?  The truth is; I am a part of this reality.  Here I sit at my kitchen table on a snowy Sunday morning in Minneapolis reading my paper copy of The Sunday New York Times, and predictably, after I finish reading the article (no, after skimming half of the article), I am already grabbing my laptop to post it on my blog so I can share it with my social network.   Ah! And wait!  There's more!  I take a photo from my smartphone to email myself to post on my blog to stress the ridiculous contradiction of this whole picture. 

What has the world come to??!  I am now logging off to unplug and go running.