Imagine you’re spending time with a friend at her house doing homework, watching TV, playing video games, or some kind of activity along those lines. You both get hungry and decide you want to order pizza, but your friend refuses to call to order the pizza and asks you to do it. This makes no sense to you because it’s just a phone call, yet your friend is seemingly terrified at the thought of speaking into a phone for a roughly a two minute conversation in which the pizza would be ordered.
What your friend is experiencing is a form of social anxiety. The idea of interacting with another person, even over the phone, provokes irrational thoughts and fears to cloud her mind and causes her to act in such a way that does not make sense to you or even herself. With technology changing the way we interact with the world, teenagers have become almost completely dependent on it as their main sources of communication. I believe the reason many teenagers and adults develop social anxiety is because technology has significantly impacted the development of their social skills, stunting their social growth when they should be learning how to interact with others as they begin their transition into the adult world.
In many ways, technology has caused people to limit their interactions with each other to a few words on a screen. These people have crawled into a dark cave and sit there, with only the light of their smartphones and computers to illuminate the outside world for them. Teenagers these days will likely hear adults say they don’t know how to communicate with each other, but it's been found that adults and teenagers alike are guilty of this.
For some adults, emailing and texting are the most efficient forms of communication in their busy work lives and tend to avoid the phone, unless there’s an emergency. Similarly, teenagers in high school, often prefer texting over talking. However, the difference lies in how they feel this way communicating impacts their lives. Some feel guilty that they create such a distance between friends and family, while others embrace this distance. What could possibly be so appealing about the idea of having this distance between family and peers, all the while building a wall in the form of a computer or phone screen for them to climb?
For many teenagers, technology is their saving grace. Of course social interaction is wanted and needed, but having control over that interaction is what many teenagers, myself included, enjoy about technology. Computers, smartphones, and social media have allowed them to control everything from how long they want to take to respond to a text message, to how they want the world to perceive them on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. This attitude represents a fair population of teenagers and some adults who have issues holding conversations over the phone. Obviously, each person is different and has had different experiences that have influenced issues like social anxiety, but perhaps technology is the driving force in worsening those issues.
When I was sixteen, I almost never called my friends or family and dating was difficult. In fact, my boyfriend at the time and I only ever communicated through texting. Considering I refer to him as my boyfriend “at the time” is a pretty good indicator of how strictly texting him ever worked out for me and you may think people like this are being stubborn, unreasonable, and maybe even a little pathetic. You wouldn’t be wrong to think so.
They are susceptible to ridicule and judgment because they are literally afraid of a task that is performed by almost every person in the developed world and, therefore, makes it easy for an outside source to say that person should grow up and learn to control it. Teenagers are becoming adults who will have to interact with other people whether they want to or not. I, myself, am completely aware of this. It may also seem ridiculous to go as far as to blame technology for this irrationality because, as human beings, we are taught self-control and have the ability to choose how we communicate with people.
As someone who does suffer from social anxiety, I can understand that this is the irrational thought process invoked with just about any form of anxiety. It clearly doesn’t make sense, yet something in my mind, and those who with minds similar to mine, causes this overwhelming fear that is very hard to control. I am often judged to a certain extent when I mention how doing something like group work in class causes knots in my stomach because some people love interacting and working with other people. Nonetheless, I am aware it is something I must do whether I like it or not, which is probably best for me even though I may not think so in the moment.
Now, as a 20-year-old college student, I can say I have matured and realized that if I’m going to be a functional and successful adult, I must work through my issues no matter how uncomfortable they make me. However, looking back at where I was at sixteen to where I am now, I believe the biggest factor in increasing the severity of my social anxiety was and is technology. Do I, and people like me, have the capability to interact with others like normal human beings? Yes, of course, we do, but if we come along a path that allows us to avoid it, we will more than likely take it and technology is the open gate to that path.
For most of my teenage life, I had been hiding in that cave and have only recently been forced to poke my head out. My eyes are slowly adjusting to the natural light of the world that is normal human interaction and communication. It’s straining, at first, but with time I will adjust and will hopefully never resort back to that place of limited and artificial light that comes from a screen. It’s a learning process, but I believe if I, and others who also suffer from social anxiety stop depending on smartphones and computers so often, perhaps it’s effects on our lives will decrease and allow us to function as more confident and civilized human beings.
