Passage 2 of 3
What's lost when we photograph life instead of experiencing it?
Rebecca Macmillan
2016
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This is an image of a person taking a photo with their phone.
Rebecca Macmillan discusses the pitfalls of frequent smartphone photography.
A recent article in The New York Times chronicled the lives of a group of young socialites — the “Snap Pack” — who plan their nights around snapping photos that can be shared with their followers. The reporter explained:
For them, taking photos and videos from Instagram and Snapchat is not a way to memorialize a night out. It’s the night’s main event.
Increasingly, images have become a crucial part of communicating with others, receiving affirmation, and documenting new experiences. And though it may seem that a barrage of colors and pixels and faces and scenery could only enrich our imaginations and enhance our engagement with the world, the opposite seems to be taking place.
In her article “Instagram is Ruining Vacation,” journalist Mary Pilon described how, when visiting a temple in Cambodia, a sea of tourists became so preoccupied with capturing the perfect, shareable picture that, ironically, “no one was really present.”
Indeed, the compulsive urge to constantly, electronically exhibit one’s self is a phenomenon made uniquely possible by our digital age. Yes, there are benefits to being able to share more images with a greater audience, but the impulse to incessantly document and post has taken priority over simple focus and direct human connection.
While it can be difficult to neatly measure this shift, researchers across a variety of disciplines are beginning to see and understand its consequences. As psychologist Sherry Turkle writes in Alone Together, “Life in a media bubble has come to seem natural” in the 21st century.
With the aid of our phones and computers, no matter where we are or who we may be near, we are constantly connected to and interacting with others. But taking photographs and creating videos have become a central part of this digital exchange.
Psychology professor John R. Suler interprets constant photographing and photo sharing as a quest for confirmation. He writes:
When we share photographs, we hope others will validate the facets of our identities that we embedded in those images. Knowing others can see the picture gives it more emotional power. Feedback from others makes it feel more real.
In pursuit of digital affirmation, even ordinary experiences become fodder for photographs. Instead of staying present — being (and really observing) where we are — our impulse is to capitalize on all lived experiences as an opportunity to represent and express ourselves visually. Part of what’s troubling about this kind of tenacious documentation is the thin line between representation or expression and the marketing of everyday life like a commodity.
Personal photo collections, publicized through applications like Instagram and Facebook, risk primarily becoming a tool for self-promotion. The ability to constantly measure public feedback for each posted photograph enables, and may encourage, users to tweak visual representations of their own lives in an effort to simply maximize a positive response.
“Every narcissist needs a reflecting pool. Just as Narcissus1 gazed into the pool to admire his beauty, social networking sites, like Facebook, have become our modern-day pool,” wrote Tracy Alloway, a psychology professor at the University of North Florida.
In a 2014 study, she and her team examined the relationship between Facebook use and empathy. They found that, while there are elements of social media that strengthen social connections, the platform’s image-based features — the ability to share photos and videos — particularly feed our self-absorption.
Additionally, repeatedly withdrawing from our real time experiences to take out our smart phones — and then frame, photograph, filter, and post — has the detrimental effect of interrupting focus. By focus I mean the ability not only to closely observe but also to concentrate, to pay extended attention.
In his book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, technology writer Nicholas Carr reflects on neuroplasticity, which is the capacity for our neural circuits to change in response to stimuli. Specifically, he discusses the ways our minds have evolved in response to relentless engagement with digital technologies. About web browsing, he writes, “Frequent interruptions scatter our thoughts, weaken our memory, and make us tense and anxious.” Similarly, repeated breaks to post images and track their reception threaten to fragment attention and increase anxiety.
As a result, we risk having other aspects of our surroundings and experiences slip away. While we may become better at multitasking, our ability to concentrate deeply over longer periods of time is weakened.
Carr continues:
The mental functions that are losing the “survival of the busiest” brain cell battle are those that support calm, linear thought — the ones we use in traversing a lengthy narrative or an involved argument, the ones we draw on when we reflect on our experiences or contemplate an outward or inward phenomenon.
In other words, the kinds of attention that we’re constantly reinforcing through habitual photo-sharing seem to develop at the expense of those that we need to engage with, say, books. Sven Birkerts, author of Changing the Subject: Art and Attention in the Internet Age, links literature with focus, insisting that “Works of art are feats of concentration.”
“Imagination,” he continues, “is the instrument of concentration.” In a 2013 study hailed by novelists, researchers from the New School for Social Research reported a correlation between reading novels and increased empathy. “More and more,” notes Birkerts, “I believe that art — via imagination — is the necessary counter to our information-glut crisis.”
If we’re too busy snapping and promoting photographs, or if we’re too scattered because we’re perusing the photostreams of others, we’re unlikely to emerge from “life in a media bubble.” We’ll miss what’s happening around us. And we won’t be able to give the world the empathy and attention it requires and deserves.
Text: "What's lost when we photograph life instead of experiencing it?" by Rebecca Macmillan, University of Texas, June 28, 2016. Copyright © The Conversation 2016, CC-BY-ND.
Image: "Untitled" by Davide Pietralunga is licensed under CC0.
Notes:
a character of Greek mythology
Assessment Questions
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13 out of 35 Answered
Question 14
PART A: Which of the following best describes the author's overall purpose in the article?
A. to challenge readers to read more books instead of going online
B. to encourage readers to set aside social media and live in the moment
C. to encourage readers to take pictures of what they see rather than of themselves
D. to challenge readers to refrain from taking any pictures while they are out for the evening
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1 answer
The best response to the author's overall purpose in the article is:
B. to encourage readers to set aside social media and live in the moment.
This option aligns with the themes presented in the passage, where the author discusses the drawbacks of focusing on capturing experiences through photography instead of truly experiencing and engaging with the present moment.
