LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Put down your phones!

Dear Sir,

I would like to share with your readers notes from a short talk I recently presented at a Junior Sports Awards to some young people. It’s for the young people especially that this message is intended; though I believe others could also benefit from the advice contained herein:

Put down your phones and look each other in the eye. Put down your phones and speak with one another. Make jokes, tease each other and play games together. Growing up in a vibrant, socially cohesive environment, toughens up your psyche and encourages jovial interaction.

Without such an environment, everything becomes offensive. Nicknames become offensive and the general banter that normally permeates the crowd at community sports events disappears. Banter is being replaced by politically correct language that is devoid of meaning and value.

Leave your phones at home and go to a community sports event. Speak to each other and watch what is unfolding before your eyes. Talk about the game and celebrate the talent on display. Start creating local legends and telling the stories of epic games, races and community characters. Do it without your phones. Use your mouths and your minds.

The great civilisations that have gone before rose to great heights because people co-operated and communicated with each other. These civilisations fell when they stopped communicating with each other and started using language of division and confusion.

There’s a wonderful book by Wolfgang Decker on Sports and Games of Ancient Egypt. Decker describes in great detail the importance of street games to the people of the upper Nile region during the reign of various Pharaohs. Over a period of three thousand years, Pharaohs engaged in games with people in the streets. This was apparently a way of bonding with the ordinary citizen, but was also a way of displaying strength and skill.

The decline of human interaction due to a rise in technological dependence, has seen suicide rates rise, as well as increases in depression among young people. Psychologist Jonathan Haidt, in his powerful book ‘The Coddling of the American Mind’, attributes these alarming trends to increased social media usage and dependence. Through digital connectivity, society has become totally disconnected from real interaction and communal intimacy.

A recent study on screen time trends around the world, revealed that South Africa tops the list in terms of time spent on social media. According to the study, it takes the average South African youth – aged between 15 and 25 years – roughly 20 seconds before they reach for their cellphones. What this means, is that that age group has an attention span that lasts about 20 seconds. You cannot build social cohesion or community spirit in 20 seconds.

Nature abhors a vacuum, so into these global social vacuums, all sorts of anti-social activities tend to take root. In a world tightly connected via the internet and social media, the world is far more polarised than it was at any point in human history. Societies today are becoming increasingly tribalised and fractured, and with AI monitoring every word uttered and typed, a new digital bureaucracy determines what can and cannot be said in these online, virtual community spaces.

In 2027, the technology known as television will celebrate its centenary. Television is unlike other information-sharing technologies in that it shuts down all intellectual senses. It is the antithesis of reading, which encourages all sorts of cerebral gymnastics. A reader’s brain recognises individual letters in words, in sentences, in paragraphs, within context and constructs images and patterns based on what has been read.

With television, human beings started to place a flickering device in the centre of the home, and as technologies advanced, it took on a more significant role in the home. Today we have televisions in our pockets, and we spend more and more time looking at artificial light, spending less and less time with real things.

We no longer look at sunrises and sunsets, nor do we look at the moonlight and the stars. The age of humans sitting around a fire in front of their caves, sharing tall stories of bravery and survival is gone. We now watch reels and scroll through images on social media.

We live in an age of digital meaninglessness.

Social media, as of January 2024, saw roughly 14.1 billion images shared to various platforms such as Instagram, Snapchat and Flickr per day. TikTok alone receives over 28 million uploads per day, with YouTube coming in at a distant second with 4 million daily uploads. TikTok is currently the most popular video app because it attends to the needs of those with micro attention spans.

Meaninglessness has taken over our lives. The powerful tools of communication at our disposal serve only to distract and destroy. Put down your phones and learn how to speak with each other once again.

My hope is that more of us will do it – detach ourselves from the digital vacuum – but I even hope that many will at least consider it.

Sincerely yours,

The Unnderdogg

DFA reader and former Kimberley resident

* Letters are very lightly edited for clarity and to comply with the DFA’s style.

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