The varying pros and cons that are value, convenience, time savings, diminished car travel times to retail stores and generally-speaking a more isolated form of existence have been achieved by our preference for living in the digital world.
The only con that was actually documented in my lead sentence is our trending towards largely conducting our lives online and in the process minimizing in-person interaction with other human beings.
If like me, you read reviews of products or services, having the ability to complete sales purchases without speaking to a human is to have realized digital nirvana.
Whether it’s ordering pizza or in my case buying new sneakers, not speaking with anyone by phone or in-person has become a thing.
I spent most of a recent Saturday trying to buy new sneakers.
I scoured Amazon.
I was on eBay.
And I briefly vibed on going to a brick and mortar store to complete the purchase old school style.
But, the thought of leaving the house to perform this (to me) rancorous task soon brought me to my senses.
The Internet as seductress
I continued plodding through DuckDuckGo searches and finally landed on the perfect pair of cross-trainers at the lowest price several hours later.
Would I have spent more in the store? Sure I would have.
But the time I would have saved from not searching online would have been mine to recoup and do with what I wanted to.
I suppose there are times when I lose track of how valuable my time is.
What else could be the reason for seemingly wasting additional time to complete an eventual purchase online all in the name of saving a few dollars?
The main trappings of the Internet include the time suck involved no matter what we are doing on it.
I’m just going online to read the news. I won’t be 15 minutes until I’m done.
Until it’s more like a few hours of your precious time that is robbed as a result of your going down one of the gazillion rabbit holes available via your browser of choice.
Why have we evolved into the mindset that spending eight hours a day on our digital devices is just a typical day in our lives?
When did being alone become something to check off on a to-do list?
Or how did being online attain consideration as quality time spent?
Sure, the Internet makes our lives easier…to a degree.
It also affords an opportunity for us to nurture, indulge in and reinforce our biases among other negative byproducts of digital life.
I’ve embarrassingly turned into one of those people who get a rush when I know the pizza is on its way and I didn’t even need to speak to anyone about it.
One day if there is a way for a robot or drone to deliver the pepperoni goodness I can see myself mouthing the word “Yay.”
I don’t like myself much for this.
I offset these isolating activities by actually planning to get together with friends for happy hour and/or dinner.
There’s a beer commercial going around on TV where a young couple is shooting pool in a bar. They are having a good time. The end of the commercial comes and the tagline hits the screen, “The original social media” or something to that effect.
Feeling heady about completing purchases without the benefit of human interaction is one thing.
The good vibrations that come from getting together with other people are something different altogether.
It’s necessary.
And we need to do it more regularly in order to keep the blues not at eBay, but at bay.