Isolation is the Universal Language of Technology

We live in a time that everyday human interaction is not the everyday norm at least not as it used to be. So many people including myself use our phones as a defense against awkward moments, even if that means scrolling through your weather app just to appear busy. I know that I am not the only one, if not the weather app…settings. We take comfort in our phones just holding them, knowing it is there to keep us from those awkward encounters, the silence, it is our generation's security blanket. And maybe I am just addicted to my phone but I don't know many people that aren’t. Perhaps I am late to the party in realizing this but isolation is the universal language in our technology consumption. The need to be alone, the need to avoid those we do not know, why it is so hard to socialize. Technology, specifically our phones are marketed for that very reason. Even when I try my hardest to beat the avoidance I still catch myself in those moments phone in hand. The things that should not feel so awkward somehow do. 

I know this is ironic to mention in an essay about isolation and technology but during one of my many TikTok scrolls, I stumbled across a video about modern dating which inspired this essay. Within this TikTok, the girl spoke on dating apps and why those are the reasons it is so unnatural for a person to make a move in real life, why it is now odd to just approach someone and say hi. This got me to think about when was the last time I had just approached someone to say hi and not just in a romantic matter. It is so normal to follow each other on Instagram, see each other in person, and not even glance at one another. Socializing has become more unnatural with the more technology we consume. People are now viewed as numbers or followers, and not friends. Of course, not every follower has to become your new best friend yet to not even acknowledge a person that lives we follow on social media is sort of odd. Technology has desensitized us to each other. We think ten comments is low but imagine ten people coming up to you to give you a compliment. It changes your perspective. 

The isolation of technology is something that has seriously affected my personal life especially during and after the covid pandemic. I had been fifteen turning sixteen at the rise of covid and had already dealt with social anxiety and depression. Yet during the pandemic, I found myself in the worst mental state I’ve had in my life. Instead of processing these issues, I spent hours on social media… twelve hours of screen time or more every. single. day. A large part of me felt comforted by the media I had been consuming until the algorithm caught up to the way I had been feeling which only led me to spiral more into my toxic mindset. I had felt so alone and though I had viewed videos that made me feel seen. I had also faced the other side of the media which heavily romanized mental health disorders only causing me to spiral deeper into the depression and anxiety I had been facing. To spend hours self-isolating or bed rotting had become my new comfort instead of speaking up on my thoughts. If it had not been for the isolation that technology brought upon me I could have gotten the help I needed sooner than I had. 

As I have grown older, now nineteen, I have seen the effects that social media/ technology is having on our younger generations as well. My little cousins, now thirteen and twelve were the first actual “IPad babies” and to see how they react to the world as well as children their age or younger on social media is very strange. Children can work iPhones better than some adults but cannot read properly in middle school according to educators online. Many of the younger generations lack empathy or the ability to properly read social situations or emotions. And yes this has a lot to do with the parents but also the fact that technology is all that they know. At eight I wanted to be a princess dancer pop star. Eight-year-olds now want to be TikTok influencers and use retinol, and vitamin C. Even though they have no skin issues and retinol is for twenty-five-year-olds. Children now have no real childhoods, even children's toys are fake Airpods, iPhones, and Stanley cups. This may just be me getting older and finally understanding how older people felt with me as a child but….their humor and slang. I don’t get it. My cousins in this age range will send me a TikTok video they find hilarious and all I can do is give it a thumbs up with the straightest expression on my face. But this worries me, the younger generation is so chronically online and lives in a reality that is strictly based on technology that it leaves me to wonder. What is to come of our future, or of theirs? 

While I am guilty of many of these behaviors I've listed above, I still find them important to speak on because this cannot be healthy for us. So just in case you forgot, it is a must to socialize no matter how awkward you are. Go outside, enjoy the sun, blue light is horrible, and remember at the end of the day we are more than just the technology we carry so close to us every day. Say hi to someone you follow on Instagram who may not be your friend, let yourself have silence, maybe even awkward moments because that is not only normal but healthy. 

Written by Celeste Nieves

Photography by Brett Brunner

Talent, Creative Director: Sophia Querrazzi

My Experience with Feeling Alienated in NYC

Alienation isn’t a fun feeling, as I’m sure many of us have experienced. New York City is the most densely populated city in the United States (Heacock, D. The Most (and Least) Densely Populated Cities in America), so maybe you’d expect to find friendship fairly easily. Although many events happen around the city, some free, many not free, it can feel very isolating to be here for an extended period of time–even if you have friends.

I would argue that going to a college or university is the best place to find friends, and on top of that, going to school in New York City provides an even larger background of people than your traditional college or university that has its own, distinct campus, not tucked in between other buildings or even sprawled out across an entire city. New York City in itself is diverse, and so is college. You’d think you can fit in anywhere if you’ve got both going on, right?

This isn’t to say that you won’t–this is to say that you absolutely will find your place. But that can be hard at first, or even after you’ve already established yourself.

For me, I’m waiting on my friends to come back to school, and all summer I’ve either been by myself or trying to go to local events that are interesting to me. I’ve gotten along with some amazing people, but I can’t seem to put myself out there and maintain the connections that I’ve made. I follow countless Instagram accounts, I message people whenever I am able to, and yet I find myself feeling lonely and even alienated at times here in the city.

It feels ironic, doesn’t it? With eight million people living in five boroughs of a city, the last thing you’d expect would be to feel out of place, but it happens. It’s hard at times to motivate myself to get out of my bedroom and out into the city, and while I absolutely love spending time with myself and traveling, humans are social creatures! We’re supposed to socialize with one another and connect.

Of course, I have a social battery that doesn’t last very long at times–and there are times I prefer to keep to myself rather than to go out with other people, but I shouldn’t let that get in the way of making meaningful memories and connections with others. In fact, I want to make these connections and memories most of the time. How do I do so when I feel like no one wants to be around me? Or maybe the people I’d rather be around are all busy?

I consider myself a confident person, of course! I think I’m a pleasure to have in class (as assured by many teachers throughout my formative years), but there’s just something so alienating at times in regard to being in the city. It’s hard to find events that I want to go to, I don’t talk to people as much as I’d like to, and everything costs MONEY!! Plus, everyone’s getting jobs and have less time to make plans–myself included, it feels.

It’s good to remind yourself at the end of the day that you’ve got yourself, but I’m afraid I don’t have much of a solution to solving this alienated feeling–rather sharing my own experience with it and how I’m navigating it (mostly solo travels to rejuvenate and reminders to stay true to myself). Be kind to yourself, and be confident that this too shall pass–you’ve got a place here on this Earth.

Written by Patty Murrill

Photography by Rose Miller

Talent: Taylor Miller

My Summers at the Space Station

There was something about outer space that felt like it was my own. I first noticed that NASA, as a brand, expanded outside of just Houston when I was in the international airport, at about ten years old. There were shirts with its logo printed blown up all over, all different colors, shapes and sizes. Some with long sleeves, short sleeves; women’s v-necks to the left and a men’s crew neck to the right. The merchandise I had only ever seen within the confines of a gift shop fifteen minutes away from my childhood home were on display in the sixth largest airport in America, for anyone from anywhere to buy and wear.  

My mom always told us growing up that she wanted us to be “cultured,” which meant that if children had discounted admission and there was an opportunity to learn, we were going to participate. I don’t remember my first exact visit to the space station. I have a montage of memories from various points in my youth being there, though. I remember the necessary middle school field trip to the rocket facilities, taking the shuttle past the field of longhorns and learning about the same successes and failures that I had seen in the movies. I remember going with my cousin, where I played arcade games and put on a space helmet two times the size of my head. I remember always begging for the stuffed monkey with a space suit on, which I eventually did buy and named Dave. While I fondly remember being there, the space around the space station feels more concrete in my nostalgia. 

I desperately wanted to leave my hometown after high school more than anyone that surrounded me. I had dreams of being a filmmaker (I had never used a camera once in my life) and being a screenwriter (also had never once written a script). There was an intense and rude awakening in my first semester in the big city with my big dreams. My colossal disappointment made me yearn for home more and more. I listened to music that echoes the twang reminiscent of the forced country radio station on our road trips down south. I Googled “movies set in Texas,” to catch a glimpse of the flat wheat and cotton fields that surround suburbs. Being far away, it was expected that I would miss what I consider my “immediate home”. I missed my parents, my dog, my siblings, the ability to drive, Tex-Mex and probably more when I put thought into it. When I started watching “X-Files,” I felt the same pang of nostalgia. The show isn’t set in Houston, nor is it anywhere near a space station in general. Male protagonist Fox Mulder, however, is obsessed with extraterrestrials, similar to myself at around eight or nine or years old. Aliens and isolating Americana brought all the feelings back of just how comfortable NASA, as a place, was for me. The following winter break, I begged my parents to take our entire family to the “NASA Galaxy Lights,” which consists of various space-themed shapes wrapped in Christmas lights, where families go to waste money on expensive hot chocolate and feel the holiday spirit. Being back in that space as a much older and happy to be home college student brought back all the memories I had craved while I was away from home.

The vast idea of space and the future of technology sat within the realm of my comfortable suburbia. For that reason, it had alway felt like mine. Returning to it this summer, sighing as I saw the admission price had jumped about double from when I was a child, everything had changed. With the celebration of 55 years of the Apollo 11 mission underway, families from all over were huddled in the grand lobby of the space station. I heard languages around me that I couldn’t recognize, but their tone telling the young ones to pose and smile next to the model rockets. The familiarity of it all leaves me nearly unfazed to the greatness that others are seeing. I had already seen these rockets in a past life, and I had done the interactive games set for children before at some point, I’m sure. They’ve integrated new technology, though. A giant display of virtual reality where parents can pay to have no complaining children in their ear for $18 a ride and a new exhibition explaining the plan to send our astronauts to Mars decorate the corners of the room. They still have the astrological “Angry Birds” arcade game and photobooth that still takes cash, which was nice to see. 

I couldn’t understand how all of these people were connecting with NASA, because they never could in the same way I did. The space station was there for my field trips, and we drove on Saturn Lane to go to my grandma’s house. There was something about outer space that felt like it was my own. I’ve sort of grown more comfortable in my distance from the space station over the years. A consistent summer back from school ensures that I get to relive and sit with sentimentality. June and July hold that hope and warmth of being home again, driving to NASA, seeing the same astronaut statue that sits atop the nearby McDonald’s. I see the same restaurants and parks, with shiny and new modifications. Time makes the space change and come August I have to take off, and leave the things that know me as well as I know them. The space station is something that has become a representation of my home. To me, it’s summers off with my mom and it’s getting snow cones after seeing and reading about men on the moon. It will always be partly mine, and I’ll always come back to it. 

Written by Ana Marks