From connection to isolation

Banning mobile phones, laptops and tablets from school premises is a genuinely good move, if it actually gets children talking to each other again. The Ministry of Education has spelled this out again in a school guide for primary education ahead of the new school year in September, as our colleague Evangelia Sizopoulou reported in yesterday’s edition. The report adds that the decision, already in force in secondary schools, was taken chiefly to stop children isolating themselves and slipping into antisocial habits, glued to their devices at break time, whether that’s messaging, gaming, or simply scrolling without a break. Of course, we’ve all noticed by now that adults have built their own prison: a society locked away in its own online universe, cut off from the person standing right next to them, sealed inside their own heads. Which brings to mind a comment I still remember, made by Sara Malian of the European Commission Representation and European Parliament Liaison Office in Cyprus : that “the last thing most people touch before they fall asleep at night, and the first thing they touch the moment they wake up, is… their phone.” She said it a few years ago at an event on social media use, held at the European Union House in Nicosia . She went on to add: “We unlock our phones 150 times a day! Our devices have changed human communication, and we urgently need to rethink the new forms of connection we’re building and the relationships we actually want. We reach for technology most when we’re vulnerable. When we’re lonely, but scared of real intimacy. We’re designing technologies that give us the illusion of companionship, minus the demands of actual friendship. Real conversations, the kind that happen face to face, can’t be edited. They can’t be deleted. If we carry on at this rate, we’ll go from connection straight to isolation… It’s time we reclaimed conversation. Time we opened up dialogue. Step away from the screen for a moment and connect with the real world, so you remember what your own voice sounds like, how to say what you actually mean, or where you want the next conversation to go. I’m not against technology. I’m for conversation. We have to handle technology with care and thought. That way the dialogue stays there, waiting for us to claim it. And the only thing we need to make that happen is each other.”