A Gen-Z hooked to games and scrolling is numbed to the charm of simplicity— the simplicity of mischief in school, of discovering something, anything really.
Their curiosity is frozen.
As I watched a recent video of a father complaining about how his own time in school was vastly different (more colourful) from his child’s, I realised screens have been able to do what warfare science has been struggling to accomplish for ages.
It was never intentional, though down the line, some conspiracy theory will give undue credit to a classified program for it. But screens were not created to deaden curiosity and in many of their uses to date, they don’t serve that function.
The main purpose of TV back in the day was to transmit ideas. To date, it still serves that purpose. Thoughts and ideas are being transmitted unhindered by waves of visual tech advances.
What changed was the spatial existence and, therefore, usage. As screens became smaller and handheld, they became personal. From what multiple people could view, now only one person could.
From the ills of a group of people or what a group of people could witness, it became a personal matter.
Imagine watching porn on your lounge TV screen compared to a room with just you in it. The experience and focus are vastly different. The sense of freedom that comes along is different too.
While freedom decreases in a group setting, chat and banter increase. Dialogue based on shared-screen material opens minds to different viewpoints (much like a university setting).
The individual screens took away a collective experience and replaced it with just-my-experience. The natural curiosity to learn what others think of this same material in real time was lost.
And if you spend extensive time on screens developing your own views first and reading everything else in comments of likes, only your opinions start to matter. Because they are the ones clearly presented and available.
I believe curiosity is when we want to understand different viewpoints on a single matter and reach something of a consensus. Not envelop ourselves perpetually in just-my-experince.
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