I came across a random YouTube short where the man said, “Don’t play hard to get, there’s a ton of women on my feed” or something to that effect. The idea is a common one, choices these days are endless. But, of course, it doesn’t take much to realize that that is an illusion. There may be beautiful women and successful men on our Instagram timelines but the fact that their imagery and online life are readily available to all doesn’t make them any closer to becoming a significant relationship or any relationship at all. But somehow our minds can’t quite grasp that.
Seeing is believing. This has been the case for most of human life, if you see smoke then certainly there is smoke and one can infer there is fire. But when most of what we see isn’t real —at least, not in any meaningful way, the connection between sight and reality becomes more distant —a new reality we have yet to adopt. In a study surveying relational stability after the viewing of pornographic imagery, the results found that for men, “Exposure to beautiful photos undermines their feelings about the real flesh-and-blood women with whom their lives are actually intertwined.” (1) The same was true for women who were equally moved by exposure to “socially dominant men.”
We don’t really have access to these people —the top 1% of attractive women or dominant men, but we have yet to adapt to our new discomforting reality as human beings, seeing no longer equals truth. Perhaps in time, we can train ourselves to accept this, but it’s not an easy task. Fawning over wealthy and beautiful people is not new but the perception of access —the woman or man of your dreams being just a dm away, harms our real-life relationships in a way unprecedented. The possibility of a relationship is as slim as it would be with any celebrity but the online access to their curated life and image can feel so real as to warp our ability to appreciate our own reality. This is not a matter of simply reminding ourselves that “Instagram isn’t real,” we have to carefully curate our feed in a way that does not provoke feelings of dissatisfaction in our real life as well as logging out and checking back into our relationships with the people we can be fully present with.
Photo by Ali Karimiboroujeni on Unsplash
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Related:
- Space and Technology, https://bythefigandtheolive.com/spacetechnology/
- In the Days of Noor: Instagram and the Illusion of Choice https://on.soundcloud.com/ULvwr
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Further Reading/Sources:
- Beware of Beauty Overload: The Adaptive Eye of the Beholder, https://www.themarginalian.org/2013/07/03/kenrick-beauty/
Interested in understanding more about technology’s effect on our faith and relationships? Check out my course, Technology and Faith. Course Description: Technology both aids us in our important work and distracts us from it. It connects us to our loved ones far away while keeping us distant from those closest to us. It aids us on our spiritual path and serves as our biggest roadblock. Sign up here.
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