Main Entry: Overconnectedness
Part of Speech: N
Definition: An obsession with staying in constant touch with people and/or events via communications technology
Example: Overconnectedness is a disease of the Internet age.
I was sitting down to dinner with my parents the other day when my dad and I started discussing the differences in our generations and how we consume information. I was trying to make the point that my generation (”Gen Y“) has grown up on computers and that our communication skills and proclivity for instantaneous response have been ingrained in us from the time we were six or seven. Even more so, for those children that are now growing up around smartphones and unregulated access to the internet, they will continue to communicate in a fundamentally different manner than those 60-year-olds currently trying to understand the concept of a wall post or a tweet.
Earlier this month, Time reported on a new service that enables people to send e-mails to a company that prints the correspondence and delivers it, via U.S. Postal Service, to their family and friends who don’t use the Internet. After initially thinking this would be great for my grandmother, I wondered what makes my life so busy that I couldn’t pick up a pen and write a handwritten note (probably in the same time it takes to write the darn e-mail)? For as accomplished and connected as many Gen Y-ers seem to feel these days, has advancing technology actually made my generation even lazier?
My dad, however, believes that while our world is no-doubt changing, human nature will inevitably kick in as young adults mature, their tastes change and they settle down. The fast pace of life, the violence and explicit content of TV and film, and the desire to stay connected in so many different arenas will become less appealing as we age. While I certainly hope we slow down, I don’t think we will. My parents’ generation has grown up largely without such advanced technology being readily at their disposal, whereas when I am their age, it will seem commonplace—it already does, actually.
Pew Internet reported in 2008 that only 41 percent of US adults over the age of 65 are online. Will the said predictability of human nature prevail and the 41 percentage of Internet users be the same when Gen Y-ers reach their 60s? Or is my generation charging down a fundamentally different path, where overconnectedness will kill our ability to slow down and enjoy the simpler things, and we’ll be clutching our iPhones to tweet our last tweet from our graves?