My son’s best friend practically grew up at our house. He eats here a few times a week. He sleeps over once or twice a month. When we go on trips we usually take him with us and when his parents are looking for him, the first place they check is our family room — where he and my son Nick will be laughing through some interactive battle that requires headsets and game controllers.
Then one day — for about a week — he just stopped showing up.
Nick was still in the family room — talking to unseen people in the world of X-Box Live — but no one else was there.
When my wife asked where Austin was, Nick gave us a confused look, then answered. Home. And it was then that we understood what happened.
Austin had been saving his money and just got his own X-Box. So, now Nick and his friend were spending the same amount of time together — talking on headsets and playing the same interactive games, blowing up the same creatures that exploded party favors out of their heads when killed, only now, his friend was plugged in at his house and Nick was plugged in here.
And the frightening aspect of this was — they were both fine with that.
The key was to be together in the world of Minecraft. They didn’t need to physically be in the same room, just as long as they were both in the game at the same time.
Now, Austin s sixteen and has a girlfriend. She lives in Canada. He lives in Delaware. They e-mail, text and talk during the week. They get each other Christmas presents and birthday presents and have been dating now for over a year. However, they have never met. They discovered each other through — well, I’m not sure what internet introduction — and for the last year they both consider themselves in a serious relationship.
Now the fact that they have never met is not a concern. And when I ask how can you be dating someone you have never physically seen, he smiles and give me that patient, wow, you are so old, look.
The point of all of this is, you and I live in an extremely unique point in technological history. For the first time we can discuss, fight, negotiate, schedule, console, beg, mend and comfort, without actually needing the person we are communicating with to be anywhere near us.
On any given day, we text, phone, e-mail, Facebook, Bluetooth, chat, play interactive games and Tweet more then we directly interface, face-to-face, with other people.
The process is, we interact with a device — a cell phone, a keyboard, an I-pod, a game controller, a Bluetooth headset — and then wait for the person we are corresponding with — someone we cannot see — to interact with their device and reply back. The gadgets we are using are near us. The people we are transmitting to are removed.
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Now, before you roll your eyes and think that this is a rant against technology, it’s not. It’s simply demonstrating two things. The first is that we are now becoming extremely comfortable in communicating without human contact. Through a device. And secondly, that given the choice many of us will often choose to communicate in this fashion.
Now, my son’s best friend is a smart and good looking kid — tall, blonde, on the school swimming team — and is content with a girlfriend a thousand miles away that he can date through a keyboard or a cell phone, rather than one that he has actually met.
Here is another example.
You are in a restaurant and see a group of people sitting at a table together — and this is not necessarily always a younger group, I’ve seen people of all ages do this — and at least one of these people are speaking into a cell phone to someone that is not at the table. And we’re not talking about a quick five or ten second conversation, where there is crucial information that needs to be passed on. I’ve seen — and heard — thirty minute casual cell phone conversations between people, during dinner, while these same people are sitting and eating at a table with different people.
Which means that these individuals had a choice. They could talk directly to those sitting in front of them, face-to-face, or they could use a device to communicate with someone removed.
You see this on a massive scale at any airport in the country. Here you will see thousands of people all plugged into cell phone conversations, completely oblivious to the other people that are inches away from them, who are also plugged into other conversations.
So maybe they’re busy? Maybe these are busy business people closing crucial and important deals.
Maybe.
But it’s not hard to listen to samplings of most of these calls — many people on cell phones don’t realize that sound travels — and they are in the large part mundane and simply chatty. Actually, most of the times these calls simply seem to be a way to kill time.
And even though the content of the calls are usually non-critical, the need to stay connected to another individual is extremely great. The first time I was in a busy airport men’s room and saw a man continue his cell phone conversation as he stepped into a bathroom stall — or better yet, take the call while he was already in there — I was amazed. Now it’s so common that I don’t even notice.
And a month ago, at the gym, there was a man who had stepped into the shower and hung his shorts — with his cell phone in the pocket — on the hook outside the shower curtain. His phone rang and he reached his wet hand out to get his phone — and took the call while in the shower.
So, what’s the point of all of this?
It’s simply this. We are so accustomed to — and the need is so great to— communicate with people without seeing them that we no longer see them.
The ancillary people — the toll both operator, the cashier, the waitress — simply become white noise. A disjointed voice — and we are now very accustomed to talking to disjointed voices. We say hello, we say thank you and we leave and we rarely — and I mean rarely — make eye contact.
Up until recently if you entered a crowded room of strangers, that room, those strangers, became your world. Until you left that room, those people are now connected to you simply because you are sharing the same space, the same situation and the same time.
No more.
Now we can be in the same room but be texting someone else, making a phone call or sending an e-mail from our phone. We are no longer in the same room as the person a few feet from us because we are now connected to someplace else and therefore disconnected from the people next to us. The physical space we occupy is no longer important.
I think this is one of the main reasons that we no longer talk to the people sitting next to us on airplanes. We used to. We would introduce ourselves, give a brief bio and then chat for the next few hours. Now we avoid saying anything to the person sitting next to us and in fact try to avoid having anyone sit next to us at all. We linger to the end of the boarding line so we can get inside the plane after everyone and see if there are unsold seats where we can spread out and sit alone.
So wait, all of this has to do with eye contact?
Yes.
Because for men, eye contact is a tricky area anyway and now — due to the change in technological culture — it is becoming even more complex. As men, we use eye contact to seduce as well as to intimidate. We use it to calm and to ignite. The wrong look at the wrong time can lead to battle. The right look at the right time can lead to love.
For men, eye contact is a tool. A weapon. And instead of learning to use that weapon properly we are allowing it to get dull and acquire rust.
Those people around us every day — the waitress, the store greeter, the bank teller — are people. They are not screen savers or extras in a film. We are missing something by not connecting to them — even for a second — by making eye contact. And they are missing something by not taking that second to connect to us.
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