5 Quotes by A.N. Turner

You must change your life, Rilke said to the young poet. We must heed his advice. We have to understand the world we live in and how our relationships are being shaped by the digital age in order to change our lives, in order to find happiness. Through some simple and not so simple behavioral changes, I believe we can become more useful, more productive, and more independent. We can be truly happy.

People I interviewed—and I don’t have to back up this claim because you know people like this, too—have developed emotional and sexual relationships with their computers and handheld devices. We are building our sexual fantasies around machines. The chilly glow of the iPhone establishes in our thoughts a subconscious desire to interact with it more and more. If Pavlov were alive he would study arousal patterns around that cobalt illumination.

Social norms have changed. New technologies—the cotton gin, the automobile, the airplane—always alter human civilization, and not always for the better. Yes, some of the more deleterious effects of the Internet will probably flatten out over time, but by then our youth, maybe even our lives, will have been squandered.

Young people rely on the Internet and its unlimited supply of pornography to ward off external stress. The instant gratification gratifies instantly. But the external stress is, in large part, being caused by the Internet itself. The Internet itself is a feedback loop; it creates the demand that it then seeks to fill.

Digital media is a cheap, portable, instantaneously accessible means of combatting both the universal psychological pain of being human and the particular psychological pain of being young (or not young) and alone in the world. Internet porn, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat—these are the new opiates of the masses. New digital media collapses space and time, allowing us to ward off insecurities by remaining in a state of constant communication.