David Foster Wallace, writer, warned us back in 2003: “Here in the U.S. every year the culture gets more and more hostile”

It may be unthinkable to some but believe it or not, there was a time before social media - when Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat didn’t exist. Even Youtube, used by billions of people every day, is only a couple of decades old. TikTok meanwhile, is just nine years old...

Social media phenomenon

The pre-social media age was slower and required patience. You usually had to wait for things, because nothing was immediately available - unlike in today’s lightning-paced world in which we have been conditioned to demand information - news, sports results.. etc right away - quickly, easily, and with minimal effort.

Then there’s the instant gratification which pulls us into social media platforms - the desire for likes, shares, comments... all of a sudden you can feel it’s taken over your life. .

That’s not good for our mental well being - not to mention the other negative factors associated with social media: addiction, online bullying and trolling, misinformation, having your privacy violated, being unable to concentrate... Today, all too often we react, without even thinking about what we are doing or saying.

We are becoming too impatient

There’s no doubt that certain aspects of the digital age have changed the way we perceive the world, live our lives and view our own expectations. America author David Foster Wallace predicted what we are seeing now, or at least started noticing some of the social changes, 20 years ago. He said back then, that the pace of life is making the world a more hostile place and explained why we need to take a step back.

More and more people are experiencing concentration issues - finding themselves unable to sit through an entire film, listen to a song from start to finish, start an activity and complete it without pausing to do something else. Or, as Foster Wallace noted in 2003, simply sitting down to read and enjoy a book.

“Reading requires sitting alone by yourself in a quiet room and I have friends, intelligent friends, who don’t like to read because they get... not just bored... there is an, there’s an almost dread that comes up, I think here ... about having to be alone and having to be quiet," he said.

Our senses constantly being bombarded with news, images, videos and music is also making us anxious. We need peace and quiet moments but it’s getting increasing difficult to find. “You see that when you walk into most public spaces in America it isn’t quiet anymore," ... they pipe music through. And the music’s easy to make fun of because it’s usually really horrible music but it seems significant that we don’t want things to be quiet ever anymore.”

Finding time for reflection

He continues: “The faster things go, the more we feed that part of ourselves but don’t feed the part of ourselves that likes quiet - without any kind of stimulation.”

He concludes, “I think it’s true that here in the U.S. every year the culture gets more and more hostile. And I don’t mean hostile like angry - just it becomes more and more difficult to ask people to read or look at a piece of art - for an hour. Or to listen, to listen to a piece of music that’s complicated and that takes work to understand. There are a lot of reasons, but particularly now in computer and internet culture ​everything is so fast​."

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