IP Democracy: Is "Gadget Haze" Dissociative Disorder in Disguise?

Mark Glaser has this great piece about how gadgets are killing our face-to-face interactions and it struck home with me. Although he is stating the obvious, Glaser elaborates on how "real-life interactions are on the outs as cell phone conversations, texting, instant messaging and Facebook emails start to take up more of our time."

He offers the following example of an experience he had while in London:

Last year when I visited London, I noticed an acute case of what I call gadget haze, with so many hipster urbanites connected at all times to smart phones or MP3 players. When I got lost, I asked a woman if I was near SoHo, and it took a moment for her to realize that someone real in front of her was actually talking to her. Slowly, she removed herself from her bubble, took off her headset, asked me to repeat what I said. Eventually she pointed me in the right direction and put the headset back on.

The reason this struck home with me is that I had the reverse experience recently -- I was the one in a gadget haze. Last week I took a plane trip during which I remained plugged into my iPhone at the airport and on the plane (blame it on Radiohead). Amid hundreds of people, I was in my own little world, listening to music while reading a magazine.

I couldn't tell you much about the airports or the what the pilots said or whether anything interesting happened around me. There was a moment, however, when the flight attendant asked me a question and I pulled out the earphones. I then fell into a conversation with my row-mate, who was in the midst of travel hell (cancelled flights, 12-hour delays, etc.) and was clearly in need of human connection. What he got for most of the flight, I later realized, was a zombie who was a million miles away.

After we talked, and I plugged back in, I felt, well, bad, with a slightly anxious feeling in my stomach. I realized that I had no real memory of my day's travels. I understood that I had not really connected with anyone in person for hours and hours until my row-mate interrupted my fugue state.

Then it hit me: being constantly connected to gadgets is akin to what psychologists called a dissociative disorder. Dissociation generally means not being connected and in its extreme form is the hallmark of true mental illness. According to the American Mental Health Association

Dissociation is a mental process that causes a lack of connection in a person's thoughts, memory and sense of identity. Dissociation seems to fall on a continuum of severity. Mild dissociation would be like daydreaming, getting "lost" in a book, or when you are driving down a familiar stretch of road and realize that you do not remember the last several miles. A severe and more chronic form of dissociation is seen in the disorder Dissociative Identity Disorder, once called Multiple Personality Disorder, and other Dissociative Disorders.

Glaser worries about the social skills of future generations and their ability to interact with the real-world. I'd take that a step further and wonder, based on my recent experience, if we're all making ourselves slightly mentally ill by tuning in and dropping out (and not in the good 60s kind of way either).

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on October 23, 2007 8:30 AM to IP Democracy