Labubu. Dubai Chocolate. Body is Tea. Slay. Queen. These internet memes and casual slang circle around in my head as signs that our society is devolving into a population filled with brainrotted parrotting teenagers and chronically online adults devoid of human connection. These words and the people who repeat them so effortlessly are all iterations of the ever-growing presence that mass media holds on our individual vernaculars. When we open our phones, we’re opening a deluge of specific entities and the latest fads, which would have no real meaning except for the fact that they were picked up by the algorithm, which means, ultimately, they’re passed onto all of us.
We know that phones are harmful both psychologically and physically. A growing collective of consumers that care about Labubu’s and which AI bed matches your birthday is concerning. It’s also harmful. Repeated scrolling through this brainrot can disrupt our ability to encode new information. This overload of brainrot is actively harming our brains. We all know it’s true, and amidst all of this, it sounds so beautiful to turn it all off. To throw your phone in the nearest river and disappear into an antiquated version of reality where you wave to your neighbor every morning and eat your beautiful avocado toast without first posting a picture online.
Going analog is trendy now; it’s becoming chic to be “chronically offline.” Every celebrity implores you to know that their persona on Instagram is not who they really are. Dispos and digitals are used instead of the phone cameras, celebrities such as Kendall Jenner and Bella Hadid post from their camping trips and say how nice it was to go off the grid. It sounds so nice. There is a way to not rot your brain AND still be chic? Some could say it’s heaven. But here begs the question… is it ethical to be “chronically offline.”
To be “chronically offline” means not having any way to reach the world. Being without a phone these days is essentially like becoming a hermit. You’re hunkering down and losing all the tethers you had to the outside world. We all know it’s good for us to get outside and take a break from our screens. But while it is objectively better for our minds, being away from the most integral form of information (our phones) becomes a problem quickly.
Though the community that is built from social media is often problematic, filled with isolating subsections of clubs, depressive slogans, and microtrends that die down within a day, it is still our community. Like it or not, our phones are our connection to the real world. All the dreadful news that we see every day is our dreadful news. It’s our community and our world. And though it’s tempting to run away from it all, a lot is lost when you don’t know what’s going on in the world.
About two-thirds of social conversation is built around gossip and complaining. Commiseration is something that a community thrives on. Knowing that someone feels the same way as you, knowing that everyone is concerned about the state of the world, knowing someone has the same complaints as you. Connection thrives off the gossip and complaints that you find on technology, and losing your phone, in part, means losing your ability to commiserate and therefore connect. In order to connect with other people, in order to be a responsible citizen in our world, we must know what’s going on in the world, and a big part of that comes from our phones.
Another way to build community is to share commonalities, and like it or not, these trends are something that everyone has in common. Being online, even a little bit, means you know about the false alarm of “The Rapture” last week, or that Bad Bunny is headlining the Super Bowl. You also learn about fashion trends; the bag charms that are taking the world by storm, or that pattern mixing is coming back in big strides this fall. Though being off your phone is good for your mental and physical health, it means you lose a sense of community in more ways than one.
There are levels to being “chronically offline.” Maybe you check your phone once a day and answer all your missed texts, or perhaps, indulge in 30 minutes of scrolling. Maybe you have a flip-phone, maybe you have nothing at all. Whatever status you are, you can’t deny that technology does exactly what it was made to do. It connects us.
Perhaps the connection is oversaturated, perhaps the commiseration is too overbearing. Maybe we all need to throw our phones into the river and get back to writing letters via snail mail. But this is our culture, this is our reality, and ignoring it just makes you further from your peers and further from yourself. Is it ethical to be detached from your community in the name of self-control? Is it ethical to watch the collective connect while you bask in your disconnected bliss?
There’s room to grow here; for personality, for yourself, for your choices. You are not morally obligated to be online all the time or to know every trend that circulates on the very wide web of social media. But to say you are “chronically offline” and hoist it in the air like a trophy for some moral high ground suggests that being absent from this society is an admirable goal, when it is decidedly not. Though our society, our generation, and the generation after us have become dependent on social media, we are still a blossoming, creative, and joyful collective of people who are learning and growing within our means.
It isn’t ethical to be “chronically offline” when it means you are holding isolation in high esteem. What we need, most of all, right now is community. So if you’re unhappy and on your phone all the time, go outside, have a picnic with your friends, buy a new outfit, try a new coffee shop, connect with others without the furious tapping of thumbs on a screen, and let yourself create a community outside your phone. But then, come back. Text your friends back, post that gorgeous cup of coffee, read the news, and let yourself feel that sadness. You are part of this community; you get to choose what affects you. Let the online world in, just like the outside world, let it all filter through you. Your community is your safe haven, let yourself know about everything, online and off, because life is too short to not care about what’s going on in the world.
Words by Alexa LoSchiavo
Graphic by Emma Sellner