In my first year of college, I learned to do something I deemed necessary for my social survival: walk through campus zoned out. This entailed never focusing my eyes on the people that passed me; on my way to class, I would refuse to look hard enough to recognize anyone. In my mind, looking clearly meant the danger of recognizing, and recognizing meant facing the ever-present, ever-painful dilemma of whether or not I should say hi to a kind-of acquaintance. I avoided all this dreadful struggle and strife by simply putting on my headphones, shuffling my go-to playlist, and checking out. Accompanied by music, I could walk to class completely in my own world. I used to think this habit of mine was both quite funny and a rather perfect solution to my fear of navigating college’s vast and intimidating social world. Now, I think it might’ve been the cowardly way out.
There’s this phenomenon running around on social media that describes experiencing any liminal period—sitting on the bus, walking to class, and, most commonly, taking a flight—without music, books, or social media doom-scrolling as life. A walk to class without music, a train ride without a book, or a wait for the next train without a phone to scroll on—all of these are examples of this phenomenon. And while a crude description, it holds its own truth. My most important airplane essential, surpassing even comfy clothes or a neck pillow, are my headphones. I cannot imagine undergoing the four-to-four-and-a-half hours of my life from SFO to ORD with nothing to distract me. I mean, what am I supposed to do—look at the clouds? In any liminal state, like riding a plane, standing in a long line, or other momentary time we spend waiting for something to end or begin, we’ve become so bored with ourselves that we automatically seek other spaces to retreat into. Whether it be music or short-form video, digital entertainment is our easy way out. What has made life so dull, so unbearable, or so scary that we can’t simply experience it as it is? Why do we need a metaphorical condom between ourselves and the world around us?
The age of the internet is the age of distraction. We live in the era of the attention economy, in a world that monetarily rewards anything that can attract our notice and grasp it for any amount of time it can muster. Algorithms induce anger and fear because these effects keep us scrolling for longer than joy does. Every single digital platform includes its own short-form content—even as silly as LinkedIn Video and Handshake’s “videos for you”—to satiate our ever-shortening attention spans. These apps have gotten so good at this dance that they’ve tricked us into thinking we need them. We’ve become so reliant on outside sources of entertainment to occupy our consciousness that we’ve become afraid of living without them. Sometimes I wake up and my first inclination is to put on a YouTube video so I can get dressed, as if getting to choose my outfit for the day is not sufficiently engaging on its own. My friends and I have a Holy Trinity routine: TV, homework, and chat, as if anything fewer than three things at once would leave us hopelessly bored. We watch 30 reels in 30 minutes and turn our phones off, not remembering a single one. Overstimulation has been normalized, and distraction has become an essential accessory to our sanity, without which we feel incomplete.
The issue is not only that distraction has become comfortable, but that digital realms have become alternatives to living in the real world with its real people and real interactions. Retreating into the realm of our phones is comforting and addicting because it allows us to duck away from our surrounding social environments, from any situation in which we must wave hello to the wrong person or make awkward small talk. Headphones on means, “Don’t talk to me”; texting means, “I’m busy.” As we wait for a class to start or a friend to join us for coffee, we scroll on our phones to publicly convey that we have things to do, places to be, and people to catch up with. A phone screen is a social shield with a clear message: I promise I am not just some idle loser! I have friends, I am doing things, I do not need anyone to approach me, to save me from my own scarcity of substance! Perhaps the clearest illustration of technology as our favorite crutch is the pretend phone call, always on speed dial when we want to steer clear of daunting interactions. The dark screen pressed against our ears is proof of a performance you’re acting out, for really no one at all.
What should scare us most is not our vulnerability to social situations and judgment, but that we need such artifice to ease it. Our fear of appearing fallible is so great that we cannot stand being seen alone with no company or agenda to corroborate our existence, as if it doesn’t have meaning and purpose all on its own. In fact, what bothers me most about my zoning out isn’t that I’m not present in the moment, but that I am taking an easy way out of the regular interactions I might have as a social agent on campus. UChicago is a vast, complex, and interconnected web of social connections—for better or for worse, we are a community. The more we deliberately avoid any interaction that makes us socially fallible, the more we lose our unique, important role in this community.
Our generation is more socially anxious than any of its predecessors, yet our coping mechanisms are what fostered that anxiety in the first place. The tricky thing is that taking the easy way out is slippery: the more we lean on these crutches, the more difficult it is to walk without them. But in reality, what is so scary about saying hi to the wrong person? What is so horrible about waiting in a queue without scrolling through your phone? For a few seconds you might whistle and tap your feet. For another few you might actually look around and notice the sidewalk and the people around you. Maybe after those seconds you’d spark up a conversation with the person behind you in line. Maybe the conversation is awkward and stilted, and you turn around thinking, “That was weird.” Or maybe you realize you love the same artist, you laugh at the same jokes. Humans are social creatures—maybe you become friends.
Forcing ourselves to be out in the world unprotected—“rawdogging” life—is the only way we open ourselves up to rejoin the spontaneous, interconnected, wonderful society we inhabit. And peeling ourselves away from the tempting distractions of online entertainment can prove to us that what the world offers to us is enough to keep us entertained. This world we live in—whether social or sensory—does not have to be scary, and it does not have to be accompanied by doomscrolling or a soundtrack to be bearable. Perhaps this everyday ennui, the fact that there are quiet moments between the loud ones, is an essential component of the human experience. If I don’t have music or dialogue streaming into my ears, I can leave room for my own thoughts to spring out and speak to me or others instead.
Valuable connections arise, whether within ourselves or with others, when we do not patch over our boredom. Retreating into ourselves to keep us safe from mortification or mundanity only limits the amount of life we are able to fully experience. There is value in walking to class with no music on, in sitting on a park bench with no phone to check time, and in waiting in line without a friend to call. If we just rest our digital crutches, we can become alive to the world around us and the people that bring it to life. The world is living, breathing, and constantly revealing its special secrets to us: the pop of fuchsia from a bush’s first bloom of the season, the whirring of a hummingbird’s wings, the crunch of uneven gravel under a worn sole, the kindness of a stranger who tells you that you dropped your keys. This life is stimulating enough, if only we are willing enough to lift up our heads and look. If I stop zoning out, I can be entertained by all that effortlessly unfolds before me—this time without anything to distract me.
Jessica Zang is a third-year in the College.
