No Wonder The Kids Today Are So Anxious

Feb. 17, 2012

By Daniel Coffeen info

Daniel is an independent writer, reader, teacher, and philosopher living in San Francisco. Daniel has a PhD in ...

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Picture this.  You’re sitting around your living room with some friends and someone comes in, an acquaintance perhaps, and starts filming you. You’re not sure why. Do you do exactly as you were doing before the camera entered the room? Or has your behavior changed — what you say, do, how you interact with others in the room?

Cameras necessarily shift social dynamics.  How can they not?  They are eyes, after all.  Only they’re the weirdest eyes ever in that they are the potential eyes of everyone, everywhere, from now until eternity. That’s gotta have an effect, don’t you think?

Now take the digital camera which is at once camera, processing, screen, and distribution: the time from click to world wide viewing is nearly instantaneous. Well, that’s gotta have some strange effects.

The social web is a kind of always on camera, ceaselessly capturing text and image — capturing imprints of ourselves — our likes and dislikes, the pages we view and how long we linger, the Yelps, the tweets, the reposts and shares and retweets and so on and so on.

Suddenly, we are all actors, all writers, curators, critics, and photographers who relentlessly publish and distribute.  We are all actors on the screen that is the web.

Think about it: We update our FB status with an insight, link, image, or report on the song we listened to or game we played. We comment on others’ insights, links, and images. We Yelp and comment on others’ Yelps; we tweet and retweet. We write emails and texts, mini-essays and haikus. We imprint ourselves on the collective social film which is a distributed, networked cinematic event.

And then we await judgement from an unclear, and at times unknown, audience: applause, boos, or indifference that take the form of page views, likes and dislikes, comments, shares, reposts, retweets, deletes. Google Analytics is an applause meter. I got 193 uniques today! 17 people liked the photo of my Halloween nurse slut costume!

This happens all day, everyday: we publish, we perform, we are seen and we are judged by an audience with unknown extension — and anything we do could suddenly “go viral” and be seen by millions. This is not just life in a panopticon as we are not only always being watched.  We are always being commanded to perform — and then are judged for that performance.

No wonder the kids today are so anxiously and constantly checking their phones: Did they like that post? Did I do good? No wonder that the 25 year old girls who swarm our cities on Saturday nights are dressed like prostitutes: Gotta impress — and fast!

Indeed, there seems to be a very strange desire amongst the 20-somethings of today. They fancy themselves individuals — Look at me! This is my taste! — while at the same time they fear individuality: Do they like me? It’s a crippling anxiety that leaves these 20-somethings stuck between safe sweetness (don’t want to offend anyone) and merciless judgment (everything’s a threat and a thin veil of anonymity affords casual nastiness).

While my generation, so-called Gen-X, has its own anxieties, this is not one of them. I may be happy or sad because some post of mine gets good or bad comments but, fundamentally, I don’t give a shit. Like most of my actual friends, I have a life that precedes and exceeds my online identity such as a kid who doesn’t yet check my status updates. I live in the old world where I don’t interact with my real world friends online. And, like the anachronism that I am, I continue to publish to the web as if it were a printing press. Which means I don’t publish pictures of myself at parties or eating breakfast.

This is not to say that I have a life and you don’t.  This is just to say that the web plays a different role in my life than it seems to play in the lives of the kids today.  I can turn off the web. But the kids today can’t, not really.  They’re like Neo, born inside the matrix: they were always already turned inside out, always already enmeshed in the ever-emergent text that is the social web.

It’s the anxiety of being filmed or being an artist but now played out through all facets of life and identity. Artists have the relative luxury of only being present for their art work; the rest of the time, they can live more or less free of scrutiny (the paparazzi, of course, is the first Facebook wall). But the kids today don’t have that luxury; they must produce just to participate in society.

The very conditions of identity, then, are the acts of being seen and judged by an audience of unknown scope and power. TC mark

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  • http://twitter.com/Gibrann Gibránn Piña

    Exactly. Now we all have “public lives”.

  • http://www.facebook.com/jesperdahl Jesper Dahl

    Not novel, but damn well written. Going straight to my parents.

  • Dani Bee

    well written indeed, and well said. Thanks.

  • Turd Ferguson

    This dude and Bart Schaneman are the only writers worth a shit on this admittedly fascinating trainwreck of a website.

    • John Dowland

      Best analogy. I can’t look away but I feel a bit ill. 

  • Elizabeth

    Am I the only one freaked out by how true and real this is?

    • http://www.nicholeexplainsitall.com EarthToNichole

      No, you’re not.

  • JBEENS

    WE LIVE IN PUBLIC

    • p.

      agreed x 100. such a good film.

    • guest

      YES

  • http://twitter.com/alsteinfeld Alec Steinfeld

    Is it ironic to like this? Or ironic to post about being ironic? 

  • Sama

    “They fancy themselves individuals — Look at me! This is my taste! — while at the same time they fear individuality: Do they like me?”This is so true! Everyone is trying to be different and individual, and at the same time, everyone is part of the mainstream and following the crowd. The two aren’t distinctly separate anymore. It’s almost like trying to be individual and stand out from the crowd has become the mainstream thing to do. What is individuality? What more do people want us to do, so that they don’t judge us? I think the only thing we can do is stop caring about how the world perceives us, because it’s a lose-lose situation. 

    • spinflux

      “Everyone is trying to be different and individual, and at the same time, everyone is part of the mainstream and following the crowd. The two aren’t distinctly separate anymore.”

      That’s always been true. I don’t think there’s anything new under the sun about that anxiety. 

  • http://twitter.com/Connor_FinishIT Connor Bennette

    Every database will eventually be used for things other than its intended purpose.   All in good time, we will learn the consequences of having these massive mountains of data being compiled about our lives.  Personally, I think its a huge double-edged sword with many possible benefits and threats.  Ultimately it is a great power that requires great responsibility.

  • lou

    PLEASE STOP WRITING ARTICLES FOR THIS WEBSITE 

    • Max Daemon

      Please stop reading his articles. 

      • Waicool

         thanks mom!

  • http://www.twitter.com/mexifrida Frida

    Makes you wonder how much of it we can even change at this point.
    Can be done though.

  • OttoFretless

    Good article. The effect this suggests is interestingly codependent about wanting to be approved of or placing value (maybe too much value) in others opinions as an effect to wanting to have relevance and/or importance. I believe our species is mutating in a dangerous way behaviorally with increased cases of ADD and diminished compassion, poor social skills and weak conflict resolution as a net effect. Ask the question: So what happens when and if the lights go out (when we have a cataclysmic event such as an earthquake, energy blackouts etc..) that stop or interrupt the infrastructure that supports this stream of distraction/addiction where this specific subset of humans have stunted social skills and who have formed their relevance and identity benchmarked by the web and social media? Hmmm. I hold onto the addage the “what others think of me is none of my business”. To be concerned otherwise is way too heavy of a pack to haul up the hill. As for my rankings on social media – thank god I’m old enough to also not give a shit as well.

  • John

    “They fancy themselves individuals, while at the same time they fear individuality.” I think this has always been the condition of young people, at least during my lifetime.  When I was a teenager in the 70s, all the boys were growing their hair out as an expression of their individuality, so they all looked alike.  But the author is right, the social web has exacerbated the problem.

  • kate

    So interesting. And frightening. Great job

  • Skyblue642

    Sounds like living outside the hive mind is tough because you have to constantly be on the defensive. The amount of connectivity is only getting exponentially higher. There may be ground lost in the virtues of “individuality” but I believe combining our brainpower is the only way we will be able to overcome our collective challenges: climate change, resource scarcity, etc. Not to say that all social media usage is substantial, quite the opposite, but it does foster a very collaborative mindset. [end ramble]

  • rebecca

    As an 18 yr old girl I can say that this is all true!!! Un fortunately I am just like this even though I try not to be, I always worry…what I say on facebook is not what I would say if you got to know me, my pictures are all posed and make it look like I am always looking good and creative, and that my love life is one to envy…yep…the interweb rules my fucking life. Someone help me?

    • http://twitter.com/_minttea Farhan | فرحان

      delete your facebook then!

  • Gsdb

    seems like this article has been published on Slate about 17,000 times

  • Waicool

    waicool likes this but his 4 other internet alias identities were either indifferent or hated it.

  • Guest

    “Man writes about FaceBook and The Young”

  • Matthew Pollard

    ”
    the paparazzi, of course, is the first Facebook wall”

    Not so fast. It is not the masses approval that I seek but a hint of notice by the girl in classroom B. 

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  • Cat

    The Panoptic internet. Nice article.

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