How's The Water?
“There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, ‘Morning, boys. How’s the water?’ And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, ‘What the hell is water?’”
This was the parable American writer and professor David Foster Wallace told at his 2005 commencement address.
That is our relationship with the internet, our phones, social media, and now AI. We have lived inside them so long we no longer perceive them. The pandemic accelerated this. What had been a habit became vital infrastructure: school, work, friendship and recreation moved onto screens, and much of it never moved back.
The cost is a loss of intimacy with life, with our own inner experience and with the people in our lives. We take in more information in a day than the human mind evolved to process in a lifetime. |
Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan observed: “One thing about which fish know exactly nothing is water, since they have no anti-environment which would enable them to perceive the element they live in.” (Can you tell I'm loving the fish-in-water-analogy?😆)
This describes our children precisely. For those coming of age after 2020, screens, online “connection,” sedentary recreation and isolation are not a change. They are the baseline.
I suspect that some of our kids already know though. Young people are asking for dumb phones and looking for someone to go to the movies with. Children who cannot yet put it into words, are showing us through behaviour. Heavy screen use in children is consistently linked to anxiety, depression and social withdrawal, and to poor sleep, hyperactivity, impulsivity, aggression, oppositional behaviour, inattention and learning difficulties.
For the rest of us, the correction starts small. Spend time with a friend, your kids, or yourself, without a phone in reach. Get yourself a modern landline like the coilie. Go to the movies this weekend - I assure you, they still exist.
It’s time to course-correct and find our way back to ourselves and each other.
NB. If you suspect your own tech use has crossed a line, support exists: Internet and Technology Addicts Anonymous internetaddictsanonymous.org).