Is Digital Tech Making an Introvert Out of Us?
The signs are everywhere.
Walk into a coach and notice how deeply half the people on the bus have their noses in their smartphone screens. Down the street, a hippy guy stumbles and keeps walking, still tapping away furiously at the screen; in the bathroom of a cinema, pretty girls face the mirrors and take tons of photos for the “gram. At a party, people are taking selfies for the Snap and checking if their crushes have texted them back.
On TIME Magazine, Susan Cain argues about how a wired world can be alienating. According to her, “When we bathe in the blue light of our gadgets, we’re doing many things: surfing, working, gaming and, yes, tuning out the world.”
You can be forgiven for thinking that digital technology is creating a world of offline introverts and online extroverts. But there are two sides to this thing.
One of the major turnoffs for me when I go out on a date is when I do not get maximum attention. And it’s becoming an increasing phenomenon hanging out with people who won’t stop checking their phones.
It can be argued that while today’s world didn’t exist a decade ago; the change happened gradually. What we now have is a fast-paced world with attention spans less the lifespan of steam.
The online world has never made it easier than ever for introverts to communicate without having to leave their comfort zones. Technology has defined the way and has continued to redefine it as time goes on the way introverts interact with the world, from the telephone to voicemail, then mobile phones and the now always-on social media.
…But these observations can be argued.
Does digital tech make people become introverts or simply makes introversion more comfortable?
On the flip side, tech doesn’t create introverts nor destroy extroversion. While the trends noticeable nowadays are representative of typical introvert behavior, introverts have been holing up in their rooms reading books or doing nothing throughout history, and digital tech is only a very convenient tool in expressing themselves. This would mean that whether or not there were no social media channels, introverts would still be introverts.
Technology and social media platforms empower introverts to connect and communicate their thoughts and activities without having to undergo face-to-face confrontation.
Truth be told, introverts function better when left alone, so it is no surprise how they thrive in this tech age. Interacting with people online is now the norm because it’s easier and more convenient to tweet a message at a friend on Twitter than to make a phone call.
Does it mean that extroverts are still doing their thing?
Sure it does. Extroverts are still meeting people, organizing hangouts, going to parties and taking selfies for the gram, clubbing, meeting their social media friends and all other extroversion whatnot. Of course, digital tech has made it possible for introverts to give off the illusion that they are also involved in these things, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t people doing these things in actuality.
Introverts are making the most out of the convenience that digital technology and social media offers, and making it seem that the rise of the online world is churning out more of their kind, it really isn’t. The world is becoming faster-paced by the day, and that may be the reason why introverts are becoming more exhausted. After all, socialization requires more energy than what introverts could boast of.
Thus, it’d be more apt to say that digital tech is supporting the introversion culture, not necessarily creating it. In fact, the digital tech may just have succeeded in bridging the gap in the way introverts and extroverts interact with one other.
