Project 01: Photographing Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation
A Call to Presence
A few years ago I was a peer mentor at a mindfulness camp for teens.
During check-in, one of the teens handed a fellow peer mentor their phone. Before adding it to the Zip Lock bag, the peer mentor gave it back and said, “Would you mind turning it off?”
The teen looked at their phone, glanced at the peer mentor, then giggled, “How do you turn your phone off?”
One Christmas, around age 11, an Xbox glittered under the tree, black plastic reflecting the merry twinkling lights. Before Christmas dinner, I started gaming. First person shooter. Call of Duty. Modern Warfare. Some of my most salient childhood memories involve smashing my gaming controllers (yes, multiple) against the living room wall.
“Fuck You!” I would rage into the headset microphone to whoever killed me. While sounds of stealth bombers, car explosions, and cruise missiles decimated my tiny ear drums, other children would screech back “Fuck You Fag!”
When not on Xbox, I was being pulled into the vortex of another screen-based parallel universe. Imagine clicking on a pixelated tree on your computer screen. You watch your virtual character (think tall, manly, muscled with chain mail armor) chop down the tree. The leaves and trunk disappear, but the stump remains. You and your virtual character wait minutes for the tree to resprout, pixel by pixel, just so you can claim the wood again (and, of course, collect experience points.) You click, click, and click, investing months in “cutting down trees” to get to level 99 (the highest.) I reached level 99 across a dozen make-believe skills.
I logged over a year of my teen life on these digital games. Thousands of moments I should have spent adventuring outside with friends, laughing with my parents, or playing fetch with my dog. 8,760 hours or 31,536,000 seconds. Lost.
Millions of developing brains consume these games, now with even more realism and gamification.
The time that I spent online, alone in my living room with my Macbook, Xbox, Playstation One, Playstation Two, Playstation Portable, Gameboy, and Nintendo Wii does not even factor in the time I was immersed in iPods, iPads and iPhones.
It wasn’t until college that I became acutely aware of not only my addiction to these emerging technologies, but my peers' alarming usage. I remember being at a concert and recording a Snapchat video. I looked at my phone screen and then looked around the concert venue. I saw a sea of screens. A dystopian thought pierced my consciousness, “Is anyone present right now?”
The thought lingered, a shadow that followed me around campus. In the lecture halls, dorms, dining halls. Walking to and from class. Even at parties or just hanging out with friends, there wasn’t a moment free from it. Everywhere I went students’ attention was elsewhere. Scrolling. Checking. Recording. Posting.
I didn’t see this crisis of connection on my social media feed. I saw the polar opposite, pictures of my peers smiling, laughing, videos of fun times. But, behind the screens, my peers were lonely. I was lonely.
I became disillusioned by the cognitive dissonance of holding one reality in the palm of my hand and seeing a much different reality with my eyes. I started to disconnect to maintain my sanity. I deactivated my social media accounts. Then, I would redownload the apps out of habit. Deactivate them again. Repeating this withdrawal cycle for years. Until I deleted my Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat permanently.
At the same time that I was growing deeply dissatisfied with my SmartPhone and social media, I was rediscovering life through a new lens; photography. I got a DSLR camera for Christmas, a gift that encouraged me to explore the present moment.
During a summer break in college, I attended a concert festival. I was walking from the campsite to the stages when something caught my attention. A phone charging station surrounded by a tent city. I stared in awe of the oddity. I took this photo.
After this moment, something clicked. I continued to take photos of humans and technology because I started to see the emptiness spreading into the world beyond my university.
I am now a decade into this photography project and I am incredibly worried by what I have observed.
But before I share my evidence with you, I have a question for you to ponder:
Do you know how to be present?
Project 01: Photographing Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation
The inaugural project of iHuman is Photographing Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation, my decades-long photography initiative. After sorting through thousands of photos of humans using technology, I selected 100 for the first volume. The portfolio spans 12 states in America (Alaska, Florida, New York, Utah, Montana, Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia, California, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Wyoming) from our national parks to our cities, and also includes photos from Washington D.C., Vietnam and Italy.
Here are my top fifteen favorite:
