Non fiction

Relationships in a Digital Age

Spike Jonze’s recent film Her is set in a not too distant future, which sees Joaquin Phoenix’s character Theodore Twombly go on dates, have sex, fall in love and argue—pretty much have a standard relationship. Except he’s a physical human being and she is an operating system, just a voice in a computer. I was surprised to read reviews describing the film as ‘beautiful’. As I sat in bed during a rainy day last week and finished this film, the last adjective that would have to come to my mind is ‘beautiful’. It’s clever and creative in its use of romance, but moreover, its undertones are dark and depressing. Is it completely implausible that, within the next century, we might start having relationships with our phones?

Her has only confirmed my suspicion that the answer to that question is, depressingly, probably not. We live in a world where we’re glued to our phones. Social networking has become more important than face-to-face conversations. We’re more interested in seeing photos of what a distant childhood friend got up to last night than getting to know the people closest to us. When we lose our iPhones it becomes the end of the world because, God forbid, we won’t be able to refresh Twitter and revel in the details of what our favourite celebrities have been up to. I’ve been in restaurants and witnessed couples and families ignore each other in favour of their phones, and when they do make conversation, it seems like an effort. But at least your phone can be relied on to not ask difficult questions or moan about its hard day at work. Our reliance and obsession with technology has become problematic and in many cases, actually detrimental to human relationships.

Perhaps I’m being pessimistic, but I know that I’m not the only person who gets agitated if I haven’t checked Facebook all day; or finds it difficult to watch the entirety of a film or a TV programme without picking up my phone and checking it for messages. The phone is always there in our heads no matter where we are. It disrupts meaningful human contact: when we’re lying in bed cuddling our loved ones, hear our phones vibrate and get up to fetch it and reply; or when we’re at the pub with a group of friends and feel obliged to try and beat our high score on Flappy Bird, or Angry Birds, or whatever bird.

Theodore Twombly realises that everyone walking about around him is more interested in talking into their phone, or staring at the screen of an iPad than interacting with others and looking at the world around them. This dependency and obsession with technology isn’t a dystopian fable that Spike Jonze has conjured from his imagination. We already treat our laptops and phones as genuine replacements for friends. There's increasingly little difference between spending time with the internet than on the internet. Everyone I know already has a relationship with their phone: perhaps not a romantic one, but a relationship none the less. Look around you, this is happening and it will continue to change as the technology changes us.

Megan Wright

© 2014