I’m worried about Zoom. I understand how marvelous it is, but still …
To the good, it enabled the miracle of COVID-free work during the worst of the pandemic. Today your employer remains 2000 miles away without requiring your relocation. Zoom also permits a (sort of) face-to-face friendship with someone you never met and might never meet.
Yet I am worried about Zoom and its unintended maiming of people skills. In the Information Age, we have lost personal contact with our human brethren, and Zoom furthers that disappearing act. I fear for our youth, who have known no other way of being and shall be less equipped to manage outside of the dimensions of a rented apartment.
If you are physically shut in and shut out of the world of trees and grass, this video service is a blessing. That said, standing alone or nearly alone, especially for a person who hasn’t overcome his people-to-people discomfort in the real world, Zoom is a permanent bandaid preventing the fulfillment of yearning even on summer’s most inviting days.
A peek-a-boo computer life is then nearly all of your life.
Next stop, the Age of Alienation and Loneliness.
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How did those of us who lived in the B.Z. era (before Zoom) overcome awkwardness and find comfort? What rite of passage led to success in business and social situations?
All the tutorials were free. Right there in school, the playground, the ball field, the church, the office, or the dance studio. Others were around you, talking, laughing, working, and looking at you.
Eyeball to eyeball and close at hand.
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We need social experience and someone to touch. You can enjoy many things on Zoom but can’t purchase the satisfaction of shaking hands and holding hands. You can’t hug on Zoom, kiss, or reach for a tissue to wipe away another’s tears. Nor will two bodies become one, attaching, embracing, and obliterating the solitary nature of life, our one-bodied universal predicament.
I’ll grant you pets provide close-by companionship. A dog, for example, offers tactile warmth, tenderness, and an enthusiastic greeting. He initiates his version of tongued affection, wetness to the max. Thereby, man’s best friend achieves an element of the touch we need — up to a point.
No matter how much the animal gives of his earnest devotion, he remains an unknowing creature, unable to comprehend our lives as can a partner who possesses the heart’s secrets.
Zoom was preceded by other inventions separating one person from another. Before automobiles, one might have walked to the bus stop and chatted with strangers. You cannot reveal your soul while dodging traffic in a car empty of intimates.
Before home air conditioning arrived in the 1950s, hot days brought people onto the stoops of their buildings to avoid being boiled by the hallucinogenic heat inside. Fred and Joe would talk about baseball, work, and their oldest children’s achievements or troubles. And, if the night was a muggy one, public parks delivered a sleeping destination where one encountered other sweltering souls. The experience was shared.
Friendships that might have arisen from daily routines and sidewalk meetings now take dedicated effort. No one’s fault, but the world has changed. Zoom is one more step.
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The shy and the anxious, already prone to avoidance, take heart in the virtual life of such inventions, the life of almost but not quite real faces and voices.
The more of us who take to the ease of the safe place in our home space, the fewer who find the necessity to befriend a fellow man.
Yesterday’s opportunities to learn about making contact and finding romance have been discarded. Or perhaps they are to be found in unread novels of times past, collecting dust on a closet shelf. Big cities chill the stranger with anonymity and indifference. Few look and smile in the citified rush and cell phone distraction. A potential love of your life or new best friend ambles past, and you don’t even know it.
Hesitancy about spending time within the peopled world is reasonable. Crime and the lingering danger of COVID are enough to make us pause. But safety is a relative thing. You still have yourself to contend with, including the loneliness and depression you bring as the entry fee to the dark night of your soul.
Drugs, too, find a way inside your flat despite the doors you choose to lock.
A May 2022 study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta estimates that the number of working age Americans (25 to 54 years old) with substance use disorders has risen by 23% since pre-pandemic, to 27 million. A figure that’s about one in six of people who were employed around the time of the study. It’s caused a 9% to 26% drop in labor force participation that Karen Kopecky, one of the authors of the report, says continues today.
But there is more:
The drug recovery firm Sierra Tucson concluded from a November 2021 survey that about 20% of US workers admitted to using recreational drugs while working remotely, and also to being under the influence during virtual meetings. Digital recovery clinic Quit Genius found in August 2022 that one in five believe that substance use has affected their work performance, also according to a survey.
Is this self-medication? Perhaps. Social isolation has done harm.
Life demands much of us. Therapists are oversupplied with calls from good people challenged by current conditions, some of which were created to improve life. Zoom has given the gift of such improvements, but it is a knife cutting both ways. At its best, it connects the unconnected. But, if you are able-bodied, beware. It starts by slicing off your bottom half and freezes the rest of you in place — a hiding place.
Yes, our world holds dangers — plenty of them. But opportunity too. I would take a chance with the human race if I were you. Zoom’s tv show is a counterfeit. Close, but not near enough to touch.
Once upon a time, long before Zoom, I was you. Since I wanted friendship, the old-fashioned way of presenting myself was the only option. Things got better because I rolled the dice and took the one road that would take me there, potholes and all.
Nostalgia, you say? Just a bit. But most people are decent and still walk the earth. Here’s hoping you meet a few off-screen — and smile.
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The top image is Conversation, featuring a photo of Sithembele Mbete in 2020. It is followed by a snapshot called Wedding Hugs by Braden Kowitz from 2007. The canine picture entitled Pretty Please is the work of Sheila Sund. All three of these were sourced from Wikimedia Commons.
The final image is a cropped version of Gustav Klimt’s Death and Life from Wikiart.org.
The Zoom Effect
Dr. Gerald Stein 
I feel this: “At its best, it connects the unconnected. But, if you are able-bodied, beware. It starts by slicing off your bottom half and freezes the rest of you in place — a hiding place.”
I wish I could say your post DIDN’T strike notes of deep recognition, prompting head nodding, but that’s what I felt throughout, Dr. Stein. Worse than anonymity, technology is providing the illusion of connecting. Screen-to-screen interactions provide unhealthy hiding places for some who are already struggling. I wonder what the social scientists of the future – sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists – will write about our post pandemic responses, embracing technology, the burgeoning threats of AI. I think there will plenty to examine. Thank you for your post. 🤍
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Thank you, Vicki. Yes, one doesn’t need hallucinations to live in a self created world of illusion. “Know thyself,” said the carving on the Temple of Apollo. Do any fully achieve this?
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Such a question….❤️
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Dr. Stein, thanks very much for raising this critical issue. In his 2023 Advisory on “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation,” the US Surgeon General notes: “Recent surveys have found that approximately half of U.S. adults report experiencing loneliness, with some of the highest rates among young adults. These estimates and multiple other studies indicate that loneliness and isolation are more widespread than many of the other major health issues of our day, including smoking (12.5% of U.S. adults), diabetes (14.7%), and obesity (41.9%), and with comparable levels of risk to health and premature death.”
As a writer, I’ve worked at home for several years and never felt lonely or isolated because I had an active social life with face-to-face interactions within my writers community. All this changed following the lock-down during the Covid-19 pandemic. Wary about my online security, I never got on the fast-moving Zoom train, thereby becoming socially isolated. Concerned about the negative impact on my mental health, I’ve recently embarked on finding new ways of getting back out into the world of face-to-face interactions, with or without a mask, depending upon the specific space.
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Thank you for underlining the problem described in the Surgeon General’s Advisory, Rosaliene. The First World quickly normalizes technical changes that are inimical to the well being of many. Add the reduction of common lived experiences shared between generations, and we are further alienated from our fellow humans. Has widespread action been taken as a result of the Surgeon General’s words? If so, I haven’t seen it or heard of it.
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Wow – this sentence, “You still have yourself to contend with, including the loneliness and depression you bring as the entry fee to the dark night of your soul.” Right!!
And I love your conclusion, “Things got better because I rolled the dice and took the one road that would take me there, potholes and all.” Potholes and all – such a beautiful metaphor for the life of relationship. Thank you for a wonderful post!
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Thank you, Wynne. To me, there aren’t many passages of life that are smooth sailing start to finish, but many of these trips deliver unexpected joys once we are past the bumps. And then? More joys, more bumps, more learning, and acceptance of much of it. The only game in town.
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I agree with Vicki on the “illusion of connection”. I’ve gotten fooled myself. Zoom has allowed me to work privately with students all over the world. However, I notice that the bonds I form with my in-person clients are much stronger and longer lasting than with those I’ve only met over a screen, even if the relationship lasted a couple years.
At its best, can offer logistical work solutions like meetings for geographically distanced employees, parent/teacher conferences, webinars, special events, and “visits” with distant relatives, especially those in care facilities or homebound. For those friends and family members we already know, Zoom is simply another long-distance connection tool. For meeting new friends and potential romantic partners, however, Zoom is problematic, unless an in-person meeting can soon follow. For dating, it’s good for initial screening, like a phone call. I think the biggest downfall for developing close relationships and bonding is the lack of eye contact. We know how essential this can be. In fact, I’d say lack of total body language makes it hard to “read” another person. And scent, another element in attraction, is also missing.
Haven’t heard of many reports of intense attraction or chemistry happening over a first Zoom date. Imagine someone saying to their children, “Boy, when I first saw your mother across that computer screen, I knew I was going to marry her one day!”
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I agree with Vicki on the “illusion of connection”. I’ve gotten fooled myself. Zoom has allowed me to work privately with students all over the world. However, I notice that the bonds I form with my in-person clients are much stronger and longer lasting than with those I’ve only met over a screen, even if the relationship lasted a couple years.
At its best, Zoom offers logistical work solutions like meetings for geographically distanced employees, parent/teacher conferences, webinars, and client conferencing. For those friends and family members we already know, Zoom is simply another long-distance connection tool, especially for those homebound or in care facilities. For meeting new friends and potential romantic partners, however, Zoom is problematic, unless an in-person meeting can soon follow. For dating, it’s good for initial screening, like a phone call.
I think the biggest downfall for developing close relationships and bonding is the lack of eye contact. We know how essential this can be. In fact, I’d say lack of total body language makes it hard to “read” another person. And scent, another element in attraction, is obviously missing.
Haven’t heard of many reports of intense attraction or chemistry happening over a first Zoom date. Imagine someone saying to their children, “Boy, when I first saw your mother across that computer screen, I knew I was going to marry her one day!”
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Your last line is perfect, Evelyn. I think you’ve rung all the bells. Funny, the role of scent isn’t something one hears about much unless the scent is unpleasant, but you are right about it. I am most worried about those who depend too much on virtual means of contact and have grown up with limited social skills, leaving them unprepared for the world of real interaction and, as you say, relationships more inclined to last and provide more than what a CRT can do. Thank you for your comment.
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