I recently traveled to Niagara Falls with my wife for our fifth wedding anniversary. Those of you who have been fortunate enough to visit Niagara Falls will nod in agreement at this understatement: it is an astonishing spectacle to behold. Even all the touristy, commercialized, kitschy crap that surrounds the Falls isn’t enough to deaden the experience. Such immense natural power and beauty is a wonderful affront to the senses. And truly, the Falls are something that you experience with all of your senses. First off, the tremendous rumble of the Falls makes itself heard from miles around; what starts out as a faint hum grows with intensity to a crashing roar as you draw nearer. The Falls are felt in both the percussive reverberations and the vaporized mist that emanate from the colossal force of it all. The Falls can be smelled, and therefore also tasted, in the mist-ified H2O molecules and fluttering oxygen molecules that carry with them the carbon erosion sediment that is also seen in the greenish tint to the raging water. The visual display is remarkable and mesmerizing and hypnotizing and befuddling and awe-inspiring and I won’t ruin it by trying to describe it all. The calculus of all the sensual experiences combines to become something truly greater than the sum of the separate parts, each sense enhancing the other to produce what is a magnificent encounter.
When you add to this overloading sensory experience some of the facts about Niagara Falls, it is no wonder why it is such an astounding sight to witness. The Horseshoe Falls, which is the unquestioned main event of Niagara Falls (sorry American and Bridal Veil falls), covers a span of nearly 2,200 feet and is 173 feet tall at its crest. Nearly 682,000 gallons of water flow over the edge every second, which turns out to be close to 59 billion gallons of water every day. To try to put that in perspective, enough water spills over Horseshoe Falls in one day to fill almost 700 Rose Bowl Stadiums (which can seat over 90,000 people). Those nearly 682,000 gallons of water falling 170 feet at the speed of gravity is enough power to create over 2,500 tons of force. That is roughly the equivalent of dropping 63 fully loaded semi-trucks from a 16-story building every second.
Now, you may be wondering at this point, “Well, Craig, that’s all well and good and everything, but what the hell does this have to do with anything?” or “When did this become a tourist piece about Niagara Falls?” Both very good questions. I bring this all up to highlight the discrepancy between the kind of enrapture that the Falls demands just in its stature, and how it is actually experienced by homo sapien moderna. And the indictment, if there is any, of this behavior is such that I would be among the first getting subpoenaed. So I’m in no way licensed to sit in judgment from my proverbial high horse.
It would really be pleasant and encouraging if upon witnessing Niagara Falls we simply absorbed the spectacle in a few moments of mindful amazement. Unfortunately this is not the case. As we saunter up to the Falls, it seems that our first instinct is not to marvel in slack-mouthed wonder at the remarkable scene, but rather to instantly take a selfie in front of it, hopefully aided by the selfie-enhancing “selfie-stick,” and then directly post it to all social media outlets. This is then followed by slouching over our screens as we scan for likes and views and comments, all the while with backs turned to one of the Seven Wonders of the natural world. We gape at our screens completely transfixed, rather than be mesmerized by what is thundering uproariously behind our backs. This example of how we experience Niagara Falls is a corollary of the transposed self. A symptom of the yearning for self-forgetting. I’ll get back to the Niagara Falls story a little later, but before I do that I should talk about all this “transposed self” business and what it has to do with distraction.
As I mentioned in previous post(s), I have split distraction into two large subcategories: idle distraction and distraction as transposing of self. The two categories bear the primary similarity in that they both generate from the estrangement we feel toward our ineffectual selves and serve the purpose of abetting self-forgetting—this could be said of distraction in all of its forms. While idle distraction is primarily an anesthetic to the self vis-à-vis entertainment, distraction as transposing of self is the escape from the self by way of projection (of the “idealized self”) and displacement (of the unwanted self). But more on that later.
The avenues that we can travel down to distract ourselves in this way are abundant. Indeed, many of the pathways cannot be completely separated from idle distractions and perhaps belong to both categories. Numerous forms of entertainment—whether in film, TV, literature, etc.—although maybe considered idle, are most certainly also prime distraction avenues for their projection and displacement of self opportunities. Are not the most popular and profitable movies those that feature heroes or princesses or some sort of imitation of these ideals? The characters in the prodigiously popular movies are continually some sort of unrealistic assortment of characteristics: strength, beauty, honor, talent, humor, popularity, intelligence, (sex) appeal, bravery, manliness, self-security, and so on. There is no coincidence here. There exists a nationwide (and worldwide) obsession with celebrities—not only the TV shows and movies in which they appear, but also (if not especially) their personal lives. The countless paparazzi and gossip rags and gossip shows and gossip sites. Is there any distinction in modern day America between a gossip show and a news show? I could expand on this (but won’t because time lazy) but I’m not going to so that I can continue along the pattern that I set up for myself: that is, looking at distraction primarily through the lens of (digital) screens.
The opportunities for distraction by the transposing of self in our screen-mediated world are staggering both in the sheer multiplicity of options as well as the volume of time lost. One of the biggest time leeches of our contemporary lives is the world of social media. I haven’t researched this so please do your due diligence before trusting me on this: but I’m pretty confident that a new social media app/site is invented every second.
Okay, perhaps I’m off by a few seconds or so, but it sure seems like it’s true. Please witness the following list of social media apps/sites that are in existence today (this is just a small sampling): Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Renren (popular in China), Google+, Snapchat, Tumblr, Tinder, Grindr, Pinterest, Twoo, YouTube, Instagram, Vine, WhatsApp, vk.com, Meetup, Medium, Classmates.com, Chat Roulette, Foursquare, Goodreads, Myspace, MyLife, Netlog, Skyrock, WeeWorld, We Heart It, Yik Yak, Kik, and Academia.edu (for a more comprehensive list, check Wikipedia). I am fairly certain that you can find a social media app/site catering to literally anything. Only want to communicate in emojis with Scandinavian Furry fanatics? Well, there’s a social media site out there with your name written on it (figuratively, of course).Want to digitally mingle solely with people who share your given name? There’s a social media site out there with your name written on it (literally this time)!
Our obsession with social media is about as restrained as a Jimmy Buffet emblazoned, tie-dye, knee-length nightie at a black tie gala. The use of social media platforms have been steadily on the rise since their inception, and gained and continue to gain tremendous popularity the more portable technology becomes (source). According to recent research, the average American spends about two hours every day on some sort of social network. This figure includes those individuals who do not use social media at all (I’m not convinced these people are real…kind of like unicorns). So, when you take those unicorns out, the figure jumps up to an average of 3 hours and 15 minutes per day per person (source). Something also to consider about this research is that it is conducted in the style of self-report, which can be susceptible to the so-called “social desirability bias,” which basically means that people may tweak their responses in a way that seems more acceptable. My assumption here--based off what I would probably do in the situation--is that the person being surveyed most likely would not want to come to grips with the fact that they spend four hours every day on social networks, even less so admit this out loud to the surveyor, and therefore conveniently reduces it down to a more reasonable sounding “about 2 hours.” So, as far as I am concerned, that average figure is actually higher than what is reported (I know that’s not fair but whatevs). Even if we accept that average figure as accurate, it is still an astounding amount of time spent on social media. Sleep: Work: TV: Social-network are basically the four pieces of the pie chart of our lives.
The way we consume social media has become increasingly mobile and therefore increasingly ubiquitous in our everyday lives. What once required sitting down at a desk and clicking around on a desktop computer or at least lounging on a couch with a laptop now requires only a phone or a watch or a bracelet. Our mobile technology is always with us and therefore by extension so is our Facebook. Nowadays, most of the time we spend on social media is spent on some form of mobile technology (source). And this trend only continues to rise.
The mobility of our social media is concerning for numerous reasons, but the impact it has on our (non)focused driving habits elicits a digital double-take. The days of the Snapchatting driver unwittingly running over the Twittering pedestrian are upon us. My quick search of the internet could not yield any results for a database that records these double-whammy (pun kind of intended) incidents, but I’m sure it’s either out there and I failed to find it or it will be created in short order. According to a study completed by AT&T, a whopping 70% of people use their smartphones while driving. Some of that is for texting and e-mailing, but a sizable and growing chunk is used on--you guessed it--social sites. More specifically, “27 percent of drivers report checking Facebook, 14 percent admit to tweeting, another 14 percent to using Instagram,...and 11 percent to checking Snapchat” while driving. But wait, there’s more: “17 percent have taken selfies while driving and another 10 percent engage in some sort of video chat” (source). Again, this is a self-report study so it’s only the people who are willing to admit that they SWD (selfie-while-driving). What could be more important than Facebooking your driving experience in real time? Answer: nothing.
Speaking of Facebook, that heavyweight champion of social networks, here are some figures to rattle your brain. There are about 1.3 billion active Facebook users around the globe, which is roughly the population of China. The average user spends about 40 minutes on Facebook per day (source), making it far-and-away the largest colonizer of our (digital) social selves. In just 60 seconds on Facebook there are roughly 3 million likes, 240,000 images uploaded, and 3.25 million items shared (source). And just one poke (I’m guessing).
Although Facebook is obviously the behemoth older brother, some of the younger sibs aren’t exactly scrawny runts themselves. On an average day there are about 500 million Tweets, 400 million Snapchat “snaps,” as well as 70 million photos uploaded and 2.5 billion likes on Instagram. Taken separately, these figures are already incomprehensible so I’m not even going to try to combine them. But, the way we consume these social media sites tends to be an amalgamation of several different sites. We upload an Instagram here, send a quick Snapchat there, and then Like a popular article on our Facebook feed that we never read. We devour our social media like we consume our Golden Corral.
In my next post I'll share my thoughts about how this type of distraction plays out and why it is so prevalent.
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