iPods: A Social Antibiotic

Recently a study was done with high school age students. They asked the students questions about their social life and tried to render information that would prove valuable to parents and teachers in how to help them in that realm. The study found that students are becoming increasingly uncomfortable in even the most simple social scenarios. The number one fear among the teens was how to maneuver out of any given conversation.

Growing up I probably heard the phrase "practice makes perfect" a million times, but never has it seemed to be more evident in this particular paradigm. As I walk the University of Memphis campus and watch for visible signs of the concepts given in our text and how they perhaps directly relate to this technology of portable media devices and specifically the iPod, these factors begin to take shape. Forty years ago before an efficient and effective portable media device had been produced there was not an escape from a world in which you are very much present. The iPod in my opinion has allowed its users, for a moment, to escape awareness of visibility. Once the iPod ear buds go into my ears I now have an excuse to ignore all social implications that I might not otherwise be able to ignore.

After watching the documentary "We Live in Public" I was keenly aware on my way home talking to my wife on the phone that perhaps someone may be listening to our conversation. The only way to avoid uncomfortable conversation at that point is to convince yourself that no one is listening. There is something about visibility that causes human interaction to change. This panopticon effect really changes our behavior in a radical way.

Somehow the iPod creates a social space for its beneficiary that is tuned specifically to their current emotions. Using audio distraction the brain can function free from anxiety only to find itself more distraught once the earbuds come off. If I am a football player who needs to escape pregame anxieties I just pop my earbuds in and in an instant I am propelled into digital space. I am no longer human but become an avatar in my own head, inside the space between the earbuds I am powerful and I will pick songs that render that to be true whether it is Metallica, Nelly, or whatever song I may find empowering.

If I am on a train in the midst of people who I don't know and am crowded by, I can escape into my digital world free from cluster I close my eyes, choose a song accordingly and for a moment I extend my senses beyond the confines of the natural world. The iPod releases my neurotransmitters to fire according to the data I choose instead learning to cope in circumstances of which I am not in control.

The implications can be seen as that of an antibiotic. The iPod like an antibiotic gives me freedom from the symptoms of social discomfort in the short run, but once the ipod or the antibiotic is gone I have weakened my system to those interferences. I have not trained my body to cope with reality with its faculties alone but now I become dependent on the technologies to cope with the world around me. The iPod is a social antibiotic.