“This false universality, and the indifference it can breed, is the crux of privilege: The privileged group needn’t worry themselves with the nuts and bolts of social navigation, because the system has evolved to accommodate them.”
“That is, they have used their sociopolitical dominance to replicate their advantage as part of the natural order. Privilege can be explicit (e.g., “Whites Only!”), but more often, it blends in with the mundanity of social organization (e.g., sidewalks without wheelchair-accessible curb cuts).”
“One of the dominant lines in tech critique today — that phones and social media diminish face-to-face interaction and thus erode “real” human connection — trades in privileged and normative logic.”
“The critique of screens as alienating is less about screens than about what constitutes the essence of human nature, and who counts as fully human with respect to that fixed, homogenous, and highly particularized version of humanity.”
“To assess the validity and ramifications of this critique, it’s important to have a clear picture of the universal human with which critics begin — and an account of all those whom the model tacitly discounts.”
“These critics are instead driven by an ideological presupposition about screens separating people both from each other and from an essential part of themselves. As genuine as this concern may be, it is nonetheless predicated on a belief that our essence is the same and that screens affect us in basically the same way, no matter who we are.”
“They assume a universal human nature, embodied by a normative technology user — one for whom face-to-face interaction is both possible and optimal, and whose local networks are consistently supportive and healthy.”
“That is, the tech critics’ model human has full mental and physical health, a typical neurological profile, is “able” bodied, and self-identifies in socially supported ways. This model certainly does not describe all people, nor does it describe any person at all times. When critics lament the rise of screens and the supposed downfall of social connection, what they ignore is human diversity.”
“To accept the argument that screens threaten our very humanness requires that one accepts the premise of an intractable human nature, one built upon a framework of normativity and privilege. Like all claims to human nature, tech critics misunderstand the dynamic human condition, and instead operate with a static picture of what is “good” and “right” for social and personal life. Such a model is at best misguided, and in practice, deeply exclusionary. In fact, no one will be able to satisfy the full range of norms implicit in the “screens prevent real conversation” critique throughout the entire span of their life. If only those who can always talk face-to-face are qualified to have real conversations, they may find there’s no one left to talk to.”