A Life Examined: The Death of Stories
“The average Instagram user spends 28 minutes each day reading content on the platform,” the speaker said before pausing to let the statistic sink into the collective conference conciousness. “By contrast, that same user spends only 11 minutes reading in other mediums, including #books.” He, of course, did not hyperlink the comment, but my brain supplied the missing hashtag. This is what brains do in our increasing digital age, in our exile from an embodied experience.
He was a researcher, and so he was careful not to draw lines too bright. Correlation is not causation he said, and yet, there was a direct correlation between increasing smartphone use and incidents of depression, anxiety, and self-harm. And as he shared of the evolution of a species—from homosapiens to homoiPhonus—I couldn’t help but wonder: What does this mean for the human story? Put better: What does this mean for human stories?
Stories—throughout human history, they’ve formed the bedrock of who we are. We’ve drawn them on cave walls, scribbled them on parchments, and collected them in books. Those stories have been the foundation for our spiritual exploration. But in this new age of micro-blogging and what can only be described as digital cave painting, I wonder, are our new platforms strong enough to shoulder the weight of our stories?
Are they robust enough to support our need for literature—fiction and non-fiction alike? Will the storytelling masters—the modern Hugos, Chestertons, and Shelleys—be forced to ply their craft on digital platforms? Will they hide among our cousin’s family photos, the quick pics from the office new year’s party (the one where Steve wore that bra on his head), and the selfies of the insta-fluencers with the duck lips who photoshopped themselves into a Florentine backdrop? And will these short-form digital stories be of the same warp and weft of the stories we used to contemplate in the great (or even the almost good) books?
How are you preserving stories? Do you consume more insta-information than written content? If so, ask yourself: Does that trend lend to my longterm health and the longterm health of my community?
***WAKE UP WITH ME***
THE BOOK OF WAKING UP —a book on addiction, attachment, and the Divine Love—launched TUESDAY so order a copy or ten at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookish (my favorite indie bookseller). Then, forward this post to a friend and ask them to read along.